- Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed no hope at all. Dale Carnegie
- Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Samuel Johnson
- It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. Confucius
- You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. Margaret Thatcher
- Dreams don’t work unless you do. John C. Maxwell
- Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. Thomas Watson
- It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
- Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. Albert Einstein
- Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. Joshua J. Marine
- Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. George Bernard Shaw
- Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend’s success. Oscar Wilde
- Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not. Virgil Garnett Thomson
- Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Henry Ford
- The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. Thomas Carlyle
- Most people never run far enough on the first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got, and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you. William James
- Don’t tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work. Artur Rubenstein
- Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them. Marshall Goldsmith
- The real fault is to have faults and not to amend them. Confucius
- If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot. Confucius
- When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps. Confucius
- Before the beginning of brilliance, there must be great chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd. from I Ching written by Fu His
- There has to be this pioneer, the individual with the courage, the ambition to overcome the obstacles that always develop when one tries to do something worthwhile that is new and different. Alfred P. Sloan
- When the world says, ‘Give up,’ Hope whispers, ‘Try one more time.’ Unknown
- It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney
- To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. Erich Fromm
- Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. Erich Fromm
- Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try. Unknown
- Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Napoleon Hill
- How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win. Gilbert Keith Chesterton
- You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end. Sidney A. Friedman
- Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk. Shirley Hurstedler
- The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake. Elbert Hubbard
- Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could … Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. Ralph Waldo Emerson
- He who wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skills. Our antagonist is our helper. Edmund Burke
- Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill
- Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than by the ones you did. Mark Twain
- The problem human beings face is not that we aim too high and fail, but that we aim too low and succeed. Michelangelo
- The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard P.Feynman
- What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. Viktor E. Frankl
- Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. Thomas J. Watson
- Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good. Alan Weiss
- We find comfort among those who agree with us, and growth among those who don’t. Frank A. Clark
- The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year. John Foster Dulles
- No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking. Voltaire
- Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible. Miguel Unamuno
- We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. Elizabeth Gilbert
- A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake. Confucius
- Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. Winston Churchill
- The only true failure lies in the failure to start. Harold Blake Walker
- Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must also step up the stairs. Vaclac Havel
- By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind. Hui Neng
- In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That’s all. Bankei
- When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes
- A genius! For 37 years I’ve practiced fourteen hours a day, and now they call me a genius! Pablo Sarasate
- Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. Franklin P. Jones
- The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself. Wallace Wattles
- It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. Albert Einstein
- Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. Clayton Christensen
- To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. Unknown
- Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be. J. W. Goethe
- Things don’t go wrong and break your heart so you can become bitter and give up. They happen to break you down and build you up so you can be all that you were intended to be. Samuel Johnson
- Failure is success if we learn from it. Malcolm Forbes
- A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. Walter Gagehot
- History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heart-breaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. B.C. Forbes
- Don’t worry about failure. Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try. Sherman Finesilver
- Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. Thomas Edison
- Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. Winston Churchill
- It takes 20 years to make an overnight success. Eddie Cantor
- Unless you’re willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen. Phillip Adams
- Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend’s success without envy. Aeschylus
- The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success. H.W. Arnold
- What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination. Unknown
- Everybody dies, but not everybody lives. A Sachs
- There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy. Albert Ellis
- The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. Albert Ellis
- I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs. Albert Ellis
- 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. . .sail away from the safe harbor. Explore. Dream. Discover. Mark Twain
- It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Elliot
- There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou
- It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. E.E. Cummings
- Knowing what is and knowing what can be are not the same thing. Ellen Langer
- We should open ourselves to the impossible and embrace a psychology of possibility. Ellen Langer
- Certainty is a cruel mindset. It hardens our minds against possibility. Ellen Langer
- There is always a step small enough from where we are to get us to where we want to be. If we take that small step, there’s always another we can take, and eventually a goal thought to be too far to reach becomes achievable. Ellen Langer
- Failure is not fatal, but failing to change might be. John Wooden
- Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being. John Wooden
- Nothing will work unless you do. John Wooden
- At God’s footstool to confess,
A poor soul knelt and bowed his head.
“I failed,” he cried. The Master said,
“Thou didst thy best, that is success.” Unknown, but quoted by John Wooden - The team that makes the most mistakes usually wins. Piggy Lambert, Purdue basketball coach
- There isn’t a person anywhere who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can. Henry Ford
And here are some Growth Mindset quotes from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The new psychology of success:
- I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . .I divide the world into the learners and the non-learners. Benjamin Barber
- This is hard. This is fun. Carol Dweck summing up the Growth Mindset
- Ask ‘How will they learn best?’ not ‘Can they learn?’ Jaime Escalante
- Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up. Carol Dweck
- Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning. Carol Dweck
- Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. Carol Dweck
- Wow, that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard. Carol Dweck demonstrating Growth Mindset praise
- There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me. Jackie Joyner-Kersee
- A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive. Carol Dweck
- I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’ Andrew Carnegie
- If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. Carol Dweck
- If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it. Marva Collins
- You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By becoming a little better each and every day, over a period of time, you will become a lot better. John Wooden
- You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way. Carol Dweck
- Vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan. Carol Dweck on Gollwitzer’s research findings
- What did you learn today? What mistake did you make that taught you something? What did you try hard at today? Carol Dweck on the growth mindset
- What can I learn from this? What will I do next time I’m in this situation? Carol Dweck on handling setbacks the growth mindset way
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