Top Five Inspirational Quotes That Can Change Your Life

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. – Judy Garland

I believe that having an idol is often VERY GOOD to the point where you take his/her positive traits and copy them (like persistence, etc). But copying a person to a point where you are the SECOND RATE of him/her is plain stupid.

For example, I like Winston Churchill. I like his persistence and quotes about success. But there’s some things I don’t like about him too. I take only his positive traits and see to model them at me. I leave out the negative ones. Simple as that.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.- Napoleon Hill

Actually, this quote was also told by Andrew Carnegie, the richest man on Earth 100 years ago. I see so many people going to schools, universities. I see my teachers say that I need to study hard, memorize root lessons to become “somebody”. Then I remind myself of Bill Gates who dropped out. I remind myself of Steve Jobs who also dropped out. Thousands upon thousands of successful people who dropped out of high school and universities. They did not choose root memorization as their education. They choose action, failures and successes as their primary action. That was their intelligence. And they got very rich by it.

Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it. – Groucho Marx

Yesterday’s tomorrow is today. Tomorrow’s yesterday is today. Why care about the past (don’t get me wrong, you can learn a lot from analyzing the past). But I see people that go into over-analyzing the past and do too much planning for the future. What about the…PRESENT. What about enjoying the present moment? Have you ever thought about that? If not, it’s time to reconsider.

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure – Sven Goran Eriksson

Eriksson is just one of the guys among many that have great quotes about failures. Some of the others are:

“Try And Fail, but don’t Fail to Try” – Stephen Kaggwa

“I didn’t fail the test, I just found 1000 ways to do it wrong” – Benjamin Franklin

The lesson: don’t be afraid to fail. If you do, try again. Take babies for example. What a baby is learning to walk and fails he doesn’t sit down and say: “Damn it, I’m such a failure, I quit”. Not a SINGLE BABY does that. Instead, he tries again and again and again. If one approach does not work, try another and another and another.

Fear of failure is simply a trait imposed by society. Nobody is born with the fear of failure. Remember that.

Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly – Robert Schuller

Do not wait for a perfect time to start doing something. It may be hard at the beginning and you’ll get used as time passes by. There will be no perfect time always, so do things even when it doesn’t feel it is the right time to do so.