Purpose quotes

Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

I believe that it's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece.

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Let others lead small lives, but not you.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Begin with the end in mind.

More important than how fast you're going, is where you're headed.

Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects.

You are the architect of your own destiny; you are the master of your own fate; you are behind the steering wheel of your life.

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.

Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes.

People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

Very few people or companies can clearly articulate WHY they do WHAT they do.

Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion.

Skills are cheap. Passion is priceless.

Legacy is greater than currency.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

The purpose of life... is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could.

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice, their choice.

I don't believe in anti-anything. A man has to have a program; you have to be for something, otherwise you will never get anywhere.

One of the difficulties with all our institutions is the fact that we've emphasized the reward instead of the service.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

Some people work an entire lifetime and wonder if they ever made a difference to the world. But the Marines don't have that problem.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself.

It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

How hard you work matters more than how much you make.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

Real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'

Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.

I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.

Freedom is not a state; it is an act.

We may not have chosen the time, but the time has chosen us.

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball, the further I am rolled the more I gain.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful.

Don't look for big things, just do small things with great love.

Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each one of us individually.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age.

Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it.

Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help shall they be saved.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade?

The unexamined life is not worth living for men.

It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act.

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful, that's what matters to me.

Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

We don't want to make our money selling things that are bad for people.

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read.

It helps to set ambitious goals and commit to meeting them.

In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

We are not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business serving coffee.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something, but to be someone.

Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life.

Seek wealth, not money or status.

When you lift up women, you lift up humanity.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

Life is too short for non-WOW projects.

Service is the highest human calling.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else.

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

Success is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction and knowing you've made the effort, do the best of what you're capable.

A ballplayer should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.

Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pelé. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man.

Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.

Do not confuse dreams with wishes. There is a difference.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of.

It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.

I dream for a living.