30 Inspiring Quotes to Help You Develop More Perseverance and Persistence

Also see: The Science of Perseverance: How Your Beliefs Can Strengthen (or Weaken) Your Motivation.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Thomas Carlyle

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

Maya Angelou

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Jacob A. Riis

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Albert Einstein

I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.

Og Mandino

Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.

Barack Obama

When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that’s just the place and time that the tide’ll turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

A failure is not always a mistake. It may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.

B. F. Skinner

Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.

Julie Andrews

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.

John Quincy Adams

Let me tell you the secret that has led to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

Louis Pasteur

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.

Robert Collier

You go on. You set one foot in front of the other, and if a thin voice cries out, somewhere behind you, you pretend not to hear, and keep going.

Geraldine Brooks

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Samuel Johnson

Champions keep playing until they get it right.

Billie Jean King

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Benjamin Disraeli

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perseverance is a great element of success. If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you are going through hell, keep going.

Winston Churchill

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.

Isak Dinesen

The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.

Vince Lombardi

Success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. It cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price and it is yours.

Orison Swett Marden

Courage doesn’t always roar, sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering I will try again tomorrow.

Mary Anne Radmacher

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

Lou Holtz

A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.

Jim Watkins

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

There are two ways of attaining an important end, force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time.

Sophie Swetchine

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

John D. Rockefeller

To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean,” says the persevering soul; “at my will mountains will crumble up.” Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.

Swami Vivekananda