Center for the Advancement of Well-Being

Famous Quotes on Resilience

Motivational Quotes on Resilience and Leadership

by Whitney Hopler, Communications Manager

Resilience empowers people to successfully navigate the stress, change, and uncertainty that leaders often face. Resilient leaders also recover from adversity well. So resiliency is a valuable leadership skill – and famous people have had a lot to say about it. Here are some motivational quotes on resilience and leadership to ponder:

“A good half of the art of living is resilience.” – Alain de Botton

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

“Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It’s the mastery of fear. It’s about getting up one more time than we fall down.” – Arianna Huffington

“Do not judge me by my successes. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” – Nelson Mandela

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” – Bill Gates

“I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances; we carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.” – Martha Washington

“There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.” – Sophie Kinsella

“Because, you know, resilience — if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.” – Jeff Bezos

“I think we build resilience to prepare for whatever adversity we’ll face. And we all face some adversity – we’re all living some form of Option B.” – Sheryl Sandberg

“Develop resilience and be brave. There are days when it is very discouraging. You have to develop personal resilience to environmental things that come along. If you let every single environmental challenge knock you off your game, it’s going to be very, very hard.” – Renee James

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

“People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life’s circumstances to push them down and hold them under.” – Charles Swindoll

“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.” – Albert Bandura

“I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.” – George Burns

“What helps you persevere is your resilience and commitment.” – Roy T. Bennett

“Indeed, this life is a test. It is a test of many things – of our convictions and priorities, our faith and our faithfulness, our patience and our resilience, and in the end, our ultimate desires. – Sheri L. Dew

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” – Gever Tulley

“Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.” – Jean Chatzky

“Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.” – Bern William

“When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

“When I look back, some of the greatest people in the history of the world have created things where paths have never been with such resiliency.” – Joy Mangano

“No matter how you define success, you will need to be resilient, empowered, authentic, and limber to get there.” – Joanie Connell