Quotes by famous people about life, love and success
We don’t do celebrity gossip over here!
But do love to feature the nuggets of wisdom that some of our favorite celebs and public figures drop.
Which famous actor or actress, business magnate, or political icon do you look up to?
What are some qualities of famous people you respect?
What are some traits and mindsets you have incorporated into your life from people you admire?
We all need a boost from time to time – even famous people! Sometimes, we find it in the most unlikely places.
But it helps to have a few words of wisdom from famous figures to know that even the most successful names out there have had some rough days, too.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from famous people that have helped me stay on track through life’s adventures!
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
1.) “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel
2.) “I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a one size fits all standard for happiness.” – Kanye West
3.) “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” – Tony Robbins
4.) “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Aristotle
5.) “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
6.) “I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It’s because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
7.) “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.” – Sheryl Sandberg
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
8.) “You get what you settle for.” – Thelma and Louise
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
9.) “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
10.) “Only those who play to win. Only those who risk to win. History favors risk-takers. Forgets the timid. Everything else is commentary.” – Iveta Cherneva
Quotes by famous people that will inspire you
Sayings and quotes by famous people on life and success 11.) “I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this, and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.” – Marissa Mayer
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
12.) “If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs.” – Dhirubhai Ambani
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
13.) “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
14.) “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
15.) “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.“ – Robert Louis Stevenson
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
16.) “Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.” – Karl Wallenda
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
17.) “Pearls don’t lie on the seashore. If you want one, you must dive for it.” – Chinese proverb
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
18.) “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.” – Mark Caine
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
19.) “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
20.) “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
Famous quotes and sayings on life and success
Quotes by famous people about life 21.) “You can’t outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything you have to play the game or you don’t play at all. And if you don’t play you can’t win.” – Judith McNaught
Quotes by famous people about life
22.) “Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it’s realistic or not.” – Deepak Chopra
Quotes by famous people about life
23.) “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk and to act.” – Andre Malraux
Quotes by famous people about life
24.) “If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.” – Mario Andretti
Quotes by famous people about life
25.) “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something; your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs
Quotes by famous people about life
26.) “Every man dies, but not every man really lives.” – Braveheart
27.) “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.” – Oprah Winfrey
28.) “Leap and the net will appear.” – Zen Proverb
29.) “Saying it is impossible to live without failing at something is impossible. Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.” – J.K. Rowling
30.) “Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” – Denis Waitley
Quotes from Famous People On Life and Love 31.) “I don’t think you’re human if you don’t get nervous.” – Sidney Crosby
32.) “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
33.) “Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” – Jimmy Carter
34.) “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – John A. Shedd
35.) “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” – Jack Canfield
36.) “The universe has no restrictions. You place restrictions on the universe with your expectations.” – Deepak Chopra
37.) “Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life is too short to think small.” – Tim Ferriss
38.) “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.” – Mark Twain
39.) “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
40.) I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. – Michael Jordan
Famous sayings and quotes by famous people
41.) “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Addair
42.) “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” – Bill Cosby
43.) “Your dreams are ballbusters; they’re not the yellow brick road.” – Kelly Cutrone
44.) “Screw it, let’s do it!” – Richard Branson
45.) “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
46.) “When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” – Ellen DeGeneres
47.) “You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.” – Marissa Mayer
48.) “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
49.) “If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business because we’d be too cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” – Annie Dillard
50.) “Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.” – Billy Wilder
Thoughtful quotes by famous people
51.) “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein
52.) “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
53.) “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln
54.) “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela
55.) “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
56.) “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”- Bill Gates
57.) “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
58.) “When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.”― Oprah Winfrey
59.) “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marley
60.) “What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.” – Donald Trump
Inspirational quotes by famous people
61.) “The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.” – Elvis Presley
62.) “The reality is: sometimes you lose. And you’re never too good to lose. You’re never too big to lose. You’re never too smart to lose. It happens.” – Beyonce
63.) “You can put wings on a pig, but you don’t make it an eagle.” – William J. Clinton
64.) “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” – John F. Kennedy
65.) “You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.” – Michael Phelps
67.) “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
68.) “One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.” — Mother Teresa
69.) “Everything you can imagine is real.” — Pablo Picasso
70.) “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.” — Bill Gates
71.) “Remember that no matter how cool you think you may be, you’re not cool enough to look down on anyone…ever.” – Paul Walker
72.) “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”-Helen Keller
73.) “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” –Abraham Lincoln
Quotes by famous people to inspire you to live your best life
74.) “Life is short, and it is here to be lived.” — Kate Winslet
75.) “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” — Thomas A. Edison
76.) “Get busy living or get busy dying.”-Stephen King
77.) “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”-Eleanor Roosevelt
78.) “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”-John F. Kennedy
79.) “Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” – Mark Zuckerberg
80.) “I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.” – Elon Musk
81.) “The Way Get Started Is To Quit Talking And Begin Doing.” – Walt Disney
Quotes by famous people to help you find the answers you’re looking for
82.) “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”-Leonardo Da Vinci
83.) “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.”-Voltaire
84.) “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J.K.Rowling
85.) “It’s Not Whether You Get Knocked Down, It’s Whether You Get Up.” – Vince Lombardi
86.) “It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.” –George Washington
87.) “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” –Napoleon Hill
88.) “Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’.”- Friedrich Nietzsche
89.) “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.”– Booker T. Washington
90.) “You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.” – Desmond Tutu
91.) “Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!” –Dr. Seuss
Other inspirational quotes by famous people
92.) “We May Encounter Many Defeats But We Must Not Be Defeated.” – Maya Angelou
93.) “Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.”- Golda Meir
94.) “You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.” – Albert Einstein
95.) “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”- Oscar Wilde
96.) “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”- Samuel Johnson
97.) “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”- Yogi Berra
98.) “What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.”– Margaret Thatcher
99.) “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”– John Wooden
100.) “Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.”– Dale Carnegie
What other famous quotes by famous people would you add to the list? We can all learn a little something from the greats. From celebrities, scientists, innovators, and even politicians, these people have made important contributions to the world and to society.
Thanks to their hard work, diligence, and brilliance, we can say that our world has been made better for future generations.
Sometimes, you just need to pause a bit and remind yourself that all struggles pass. Never hesitate to turn to this list of quotes by famous people whenever you feel you need to feel inspired.
For in your journey towards success, it pays to carry something precious on hand.