Inspirational Quotes for Big Thinkers

Thinking big is a massive endeavour.  And sometimes, its easy to find yourself slipping back into small thinking habits. You know, those days when its all just a little too hard, and you just want to pack it all in, call off the revolution and drag yourself back to bed …

Yeah, I had one of those days today, so I went hunting for a bit of a pick-me-up (no, I didn’t go and buy the largest block of chocolate I could find, not that I didn’t want to …) and found these nuggets of inspiration.  Enjoy!

Thinking big is not about accumulating – possessions, fame, friends or influence. It is not about getting rich (though you may reap financial rewards). Thinking big is creating a world of collaboration and cooperation instead of competition. To think big is to build a life in which more is accomplished with others than could have been dreamed of separately.
~ Michael Port,  The Think Big Manifesto (pg 20)

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.
~ Mark Twain

Think big and don’t listen to people who tell you it can’t be done. Life’s too short to think small.
~ Tim Ferriss

… if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. … If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
~ Henry Thoreau, Walden (Ch 18 – Conclusion)

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thinking big will produce a society that prizes people of values, not people who have net value; that elects people of principles, not people with cronies who have the most principal in their bank accounts; that seeks truth, not trite, media-generated baby food to distract us from the realities of our world; that considers that each and every one of us has the potential to think big about ourselves.
~ Michael Port,  The Think Big Manifesto (pg 38)

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your mind. Put your whole soul to it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
~ Theodore Roosevelt “The Strenuous Life” Speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago, April 10, 1899

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.
~ Henry Ford

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!
~ W. H. Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition (via Goethe, Faust and Tricky Translations)

It is never to late to abandon our prejudices, to rethink, to think deeply again, again, and again about the world and what is right.
~ Michael Port,  The Think Big Manifesto (pg 49)

Rich and Happy people understand that as human beings, we have an incredible innate ability to deal with things if they go wrong. It isn’t necessary to avoid failures, because not only can we handle them, they are an opportunity to learn and grow.
~ John P. Strelecky & Tim Brownson, How to be Rich and Happy, (pg 61)

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
~ Theodore Roosevelt “Citizenship in a Republic,” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
~ Mark Twain

What quote helps inspire your personal Think Big Revolution?