The best way to become successful and have a meaningful life is to live at the intersection of your gifts and the needs of the world. Aristotle put it best: “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation”–which reminds me of something that productivity master Bob Pozen once said: “You need to not only know what you’re best at, but what skills your organization, your industry, and the world are looking for.”
However, the inner life of each man is the life that they truly live, not their day-to-day actions. That means: I don’t care what I go through externally because nobody can steal the life I live on the inside. Again, Victor Frankl put it best in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Below lies 100 quotes from 100 of the greatest people who ever lived and walked this earth. Among them are mathematical geniuses, literary geniuses, scientific geniuses, diplomatic geniuses, economic geniuses, legendary artists, transformative philosophers, innovators, leaders of industry, historical revolutionaries, masters of certain skills, and leaders of thought/movements. What an honor to share a common human thread with all of these individuals. What an honor to learn about them and learn from them. I invite you to do the same.
I’ve come into contact with the big impact these people have had on the world through my history classes, literature classes, seminars, and media exposures. And I have always wondered: what makes these people so great? They are all geniuses at what they do. All of them. I chose them one by one because of how exceptional they really are.
Researching these people, reading their biographies, and refreshing myself with their works has been the most bewildering experience I’ve had in a long time. I encourage you to read about these people and examine their work for yourself to find out why. If anything, these geniuses of our world only serve as a testament to the power of the mind, the complexity of our inner workings, and the extent to which all of us can achieve and create.
Side note: The greatest human being who has ever walked the planet isn’t going to be on this list. Because Jesus Christ wasn’t just a great teacher/leader/thinker. Jesus Christ is the living Son of God. And most of the thinkers and scientists on this list will corroborate that. Jesus will give you access to the Mind of the Creator Himself, instead of our helpless attempts to learn from mere creation like ourselves.
1. Achievers actively go after what they want
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
Leonardo da Vinci
2. Keep it going
In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins.
Ulysses S. Grant
3. Who you are matters more than what you do
It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.
Tony Robbins
4. Mastering your own mind opens the door for creative invention
Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.
Nikola Tesla
5. Perseverance is the only way to progress
To reach a port we must set sail –
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.
6. What you do with what you have is what counts
It’s not about the car you drive. It’s about the size of your arm hanging out the window.
Dwayne Johnson
7. Don’t take the most common route
The most dangerous phrase in the language is: “we’ve always done it that way.”
Grace Hopper
8. Think without placing any limitations on yourself
To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world, is just as base as to use force… Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
Hypatia of Alexandria
9. Think independently and objectively
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking…
Leo Tolstoy
10. If you do what you really like, you’ll never be unhappy doing it
Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like.
Jane Austen
11. Better be hungry in body than in mind
When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
Desiderius Erasmus
12. Only fools make claims without evidence
For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
13. Real influence comes from thinking and then working
My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously.
Emmy Noether
14. Always take the chance
But still try for who knows what is possible!
Michael Faraday
15. Always question the status quo
Let us never cease from thinking—what is this ‘civilisation’ in which we find ourselves? What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them? What are these professions and why should we make money out of them?
Virginia Woolf
16. Minds that can think can only have come from a Mind that also thinks
The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.
Euclid
17. You have nothing to lose.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve Jobs
18. Use your gifts for the common good
It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
René Descartes
19. You must try to surpass your capacity in order to reach it
The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
John Stuart Mill
20. Focus on the advancement of ideas, not the people around you
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
Marie Curie
21. Sometimes you need to follow your heart
The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows not of.
Blaise Pascal
22. Learn from every person you encounter
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei
23. Do what you love for no return
Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing?
Johannes Kepler
24. Boldness causes a ripple effect on others
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
Billy Graham
25. Don’t mind what people say
I pay no attention whatever to anybody’s praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
26. Show not tell
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekhov
27. Don’t compete with anyone but yourself
Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner
28. Little wins lead to great victories
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent van Gogh
29. Work is the currency of success
I was made to work. If you are equally industrious, you will be equally successful.
Johann Sebastian Bach
30. Relationships are the most important thing in life
What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?
George Eliot
31. You are here to make the world better
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
Woodrow Wilson
32. Contentment is spiritual wealth
He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
Socrates
33. Endure in pain
There is a Languor of the Life
Emily Dickinson
More imminent than Pain—
‘Tis Pain’s Successor—When the Soul
Has suffered all it can—
34. Be careful what you step into
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
35. If you’re bored with life, it’s your fault
“Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.”
Queen Elizabeth I of England
36. Don’t judge people without understanding them
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him
Fyodor Dostoevsky
37. Stop complaining about other people
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.
John von Neumann
38. Always go for quality over quantity
The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.
Marilyn vos Savant
39. Commit to a life of prudence at all costs
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
40. Love creates a pleasure that awakens the mind and its hopes
The mind which is created quick to love, is responsive to everything that is pleasing, soon as by pleasure it is awakened into activity. Your apprehensive faculty draws an impression from a real object, and unfolds it within you, so that it makes the mind turn thereto. And if, being turned, it inclines towards it, that inclination is love; that is nature, which through pleasure is bound anew within you.
Dante Alighieri
41. The joy is in the journey, not the destination
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
42. You need to seek knowledge and then share it with others
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
Germaine de Staël
43. You are responsible for your own conduct
Society doesn’t have values. People have values.
Milton Friedman
44. Seek both depth and breadth in your practice
Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
Ludwig van Beethoven
45. Perfection is a vain pursuit
I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe
46. Knowledge is endless, so never settle
I never am really satisfied that I understand anything; because, understand it well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand about the many connections and relations which occur to me, how the matter in question was first thought of or arrived at, etc., etc.
Ada Lovelace
47. Think strategy before action
The greatest strategy is doomed if it’s implemented badly.
Bernhard Riemann
48. Negative beliefs have devastating effects
The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.
Bill Gates
49. Mental fortitude is the predecessor of success
However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.
Stephen Hawking
50. Look beyond yourself
Rise above oneself and grasp the world.
Archimedes
51. Go big or go home
Any crusade requires optimism and the ambition to aim high.
Paul Allen
52. If you don’t like it, change it
What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
Maya Angelou
53. Matters of eternity should proceed material endeavors.
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
Albert Einstein
54. Fear no thing and no one
Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare
55. Choose your company wisely
We are like chameleons. We take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.
John Locke
56. Success is proportional to effort
The level of effort you tolerate from yourself will define your life.
Tom Bileyu
57. Build resilience
It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
Charles Darwin
not the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
58. Humans have a spirit and it is immortal
Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal.
Werner von Braun
59. Be compassionate and empathetic
Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
Benjamin Franklin
60. Take risks
In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
Mark Zuckerberg
61. Change yourself and then the world will change
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do.
Mohandas Ghandi
62. The possibilities are limitless, you just need to keep trying
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.
Thomas Edison
63. There is a powerful Being behind this vast universe
He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God… Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the Earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance. The true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful being.
Isaac Newton
64. Understand yourself
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Carl Jung
65. Learn and then let go
We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.
George Washington
66. Use failure to strengthen you
The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.
Ernest Hemingway
67. Dream with wide open eyes
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
Thomas Edward Lawrence
68. Be a strong leader
I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.
Alexander the Great
69. Make the most of your life
To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
70. Allow yourself to feel deeply and reflect
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
Charles Dickens
71. Lose yourself in a practice
When one is painting, one does not think.
Raphael
72. Try to understand people
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Baruch Spinoza
73. Surround yourself with encouraging people
Keep away from 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
74. Aim high and miss, no big deal
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Michelangelo
75. You are in control
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
76. Some things in life have got to be taken seriously
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own.
Herman Melville
77. What you do today matters
I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
James Joyce
78. Go all in
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Alexander Pope
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
79. Do something about it
Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
Pythagoras
80. Your outlook is what matters
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
81. Embrace discomfort
All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise.
Cleopatra VII Philopator
82. If you never try, you’ll never know
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
Thomas Stearns Eliot
83. Guard your heart
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
84. Do not allow yourself to be ignorant
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Plato
85. Pain is necessary
Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
John Keats
86. Work and the opportunity will find you
When you knock on the door of opportunity, do not be surprised that it is work who answers.
Brendon Burchard
87. Belief makes achievement possible
It is not necessary that you strain about doing anything. Just believe. For in the strength of your belief, your faith will make it so.
Wayne Dyer
88. Help others with what you know
Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.
Thomas Aquinas
89. Everything you do matters
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
Warren Buffett
90. Do more than is expected of you
The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
Napoleon Hill
91. Take it upon yourself to learn constantly
Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.
Jim Rohn
92. Stop talking and start doing
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
John Calvin Maxwell
93. It’s going to be rough, but you gotta face it
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
Winston Churchill
94. Always give back
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
Andrew Carnegie
95. No one but God can truly satisfy you
If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
Clive Staples Lewis
96. Education is the foundation of a free people
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
97. Allow no one reign over your own mind
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
George Orwelll
98. Do more for others
To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.
Henry Ford
99. Evaluate your stance on all things against God’s stance
My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is if we are on God’s side, for God is always right.
Abraham Lincoln
100. Be comfortable being alone
I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.
Emily Brontë