“I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.”
Zora Neale Hurston · "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," World Tomorrow, 1928
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Inspiration Quotes
120 quotes on inspiration and encouragement — from the classics to the everyday.
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”
Martin Luther King Jr. · "A Question of Life or Death," speech, Louisville, Kentucky, March 1956
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”
Martin Luther King Jr. · "I Have a Dream" speech, Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963
“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
W.E.B. Du Bois · "John Brown," 1909
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Harriet Tubman · widely attributed, circa 1896
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass · "If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress," speech, 1857
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you.”
Walt Whitman
“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.”
Walter Elliot · The Spiritual Life
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.”
Steve Jobs · Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.”
Albert Einstein
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Steve Jobs · Stanford Commencement Address, 2005
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
Helen Keller
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
Arthur Ashe
“I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six 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 · Nike advertisement, 1997
“Believe you can and you're halfway there.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill
“Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
Anthony Bourdain
