Sometimes, when you need inspiration in your life--whether for love, success, or work--it helps to hear the motivational words that others have shared. So here are 101 of the best positive quotes guaranteed to change your attitude and make you feel happy.
There are some classics in the list, and many you probably haven't heard before. (Seriously, can you find another list that includes Dave Chappelle, Elon Musk, Carrie Fisher, and Friedrich Nietzsche?)
Got another great one? Let us know in the comments below. Also, check out a few of the annual great quote roundups I've put together the last couple of years: 366 Daily Inspirational Quotes for 2016, One Month at a Time and 365 Great Quotes for 2017 (Inspiring Words for the New Year).
1. "The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching." --Dave Chappelle
2. "Reality is created by the mind, we can change our reality by changing our mind." --Plato
3. "Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else." --Sara Blakely
4. "Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results." --Willie Nelson
5. "Opportunities multiply as they are seized." --Sun Tzu
6. We build too many walls and not enough bridges. --Isaac Newton
7. "You can have anything you want, if you want it badly enough." --Abraham Lincoln
8. "Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them." --Marcus Aurelius
9. "Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." --John D. Rockefeller
10. "You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing." --Rene Descartes
11. "I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom." --George S. Patton
12. "I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." --Muhammad Ali
13. "Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny." --Mahatma Gandhi
14. "To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no one else will." --Sugar Ray Robinson
15. "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse." --Florence Nightingale
16. "Fall seven times and stand up eight."--Proverb
17. "Like the wind that carries one ship east and another west, the law of autosuggestion will lift you up or pull you down according to the way that you set your sails of thought." --Napoleon Hill
18. "They told me I didn't understand the assignment, I told them they didn't understand life." --John Lennon
19. "Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances." --Aristotle
20. "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." --Mother Teresa
21. "I think one day youll find that you're the hero you've been looking for." --Jimmy Stewart
22. "The most successful people reach the top not because they are free of limitations, but because they act in spite of their limitations." --Michael K. Williams
23. "Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you." -- Mary Lou Retton
24. "We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." --J. K. Rowling
25. "The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another." --Alexander Graham Bell
26. "When I bet on horses, I never lose. Why? I bet on all the horses." --Aziz Ansari
27. "Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old." --George R. R. Martin
28. "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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
29. "Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent." --Marilyn vos Savant
30. "Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses." --Alphonse Karr
31. "A problem is a chance for you to do your best." --Duke Ellington
32. "One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests." --John Stuart Mill
33. "The firsts go away - first love, first kiss, first baby. You have to create new ones." --Sarah Jessica Parker
34. "Believe you can and you're halfway there." --Theodore Roosevelt
35. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." --Steve Jobs
36. "If you steadfastly refused to quit, you rapidly narrowed your options to only winning." --Brad Thor
37. "Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough." --Oprah Winfrey
38. "If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever." --Thomas Aquinas
39. "Every day we choose who we are by how we define ourselves." --Angelina Jolie
40. "If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges." --Pat Riley
41. "If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." --Henry Ford
42. "Eventually, the nerds and the geeks will have their day." --Judd Apatow
43. "I shouldn't even be here, so if I'm here, I better do something good." --Tammy Duckworth
44. "Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it." -- Lord Chesterfield
45. "Nothing is hopeless that is right." --Susan B. Anthony
46. "We are all ordinary. We are all boring. We are all spectacular. We are all shy. We are all bold. We are all heroes. We are all helpless. It just depends on the day." --Brad Meltzer
47. "Be yourself; everyone else is taken." --Oscar Wilde
48. "Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery." --Malcolm X
49. "You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind." --Emmet Fox
50. "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on." --Sheryl Sandberg
51. "I tend to think you're fearless when you recognize why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway." --Christian Bale
52. Teach your children early not to pass the blame or make excuses, but to take responsibility for their actions." --Eric Greitens
53. "I still feel like I have a lot to prove. My biggest burning question is 'How much more are you capable of?'" -- Drew Barrymore
54. "No matter how dirty your past is, your future is still spotless." --Drake
55. "If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it." --Elon Musk
56. "The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus." --Bruce Lee
57. "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." --Maya Angelou
58. "One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful." --Sigmund Freud
59. "I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life." -- Adam Sandler
60. "Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave." --Mary Tyler Moore
61. "Someday is not a day of the week." --Janet Dailey
62. "More men have become great through practice than by nature." --Democritus
63. "If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want." -Zig Ziglar
64. "You can't knock on opportunity's door and not be ready." --Bruno Mars
65. "I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions." --Stephen Covey
66. "Don't wait around for someone else to tell your story. Do it yourself by whatever means necessary." --Lena Dunham
67. "If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes." --John Wooden
68. "Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others." --Samuel Johnson
69. "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." --Confucius
70. "The reward of a thing well done is having done it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson
71. "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it." --Edith Wharton
72. "Falling down is not a failure. Failure comes when you stay where you have fallen." --Socrates
73. "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." --John F. Kennedy
74. "A lot of times people look at the negative side of what they feel they can't do. I always look on the positive side of what I can do." --Chuck Norris
75. "Sometimes you can only find heaven by slowly backing away from hell." --Carrie Fisher
76. "Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched." -- Mindy Kaling
77. "The best protection any woman can have... is courage." --Elizabeth Cady Stanton
78. "You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream." --C.S Lewis
79. "I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." --Ann Frank
80. "I'm intimidated by the fear of being average." --Taylor Swift
81. "Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write." --Mark Cuban
82. "If you want to live on the edge of life, you need to be flexible." -- Kim Novak
83. "Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it's about having a lot of options." --Chris Rock
84. "Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more." -Tony Robbins
85. "I hate that word: 'lucky.' It cheapens a lot of hard work." --Peter Dinklage
86. "The greatest thing about having a child is putting yourself second in your own life. It's a massive gift to be able to say you're not the most important person to yourself." --Louis C.K.
87. "Each person must live their life as a model for others." --Rosa Parks
88. Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action. --Benjamin Disraeli
89. "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." --Alice Walker
90. "You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime." --Dale Carnegie
91. "I love what I do, and when you love what you do, you want to be the best at it." --Jay-Z
92. "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw
93. "I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." --Galileo
94. "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." --Marianne Williamson
95. "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." --Friedrich Nietzsche
96. "Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy." --Norman Vincent Peale
97. "Life is either a great adventure or nothing at all." --Helen Keller
98. "If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten! And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing..." --Monty Python
99. "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." --Mark Twain
100. "You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will." --Stephen King
101. "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." --William Shakespeare
