100+ APA Direct Quote Examples: Perfect Copywriting & Citation Guide

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” (Churchill, n.d.).

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” (Roosevelt, n.d.).

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” (Gandhi, n.d.).

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” (Mandela, 1994).

“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” (Franklin, n.d.).

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” (Edison, n.d.).

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” (Edison, n.d.).

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” (Hemingway, n.d.).

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” (Roosevelt, n.d.).

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.” (Roosevelt, n.d.).

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” (Eleanor Roosevelt, n.d.).

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” (Roosevelt, n.d.).

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” (Einstein, 1929).

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” (Einstein, 1946).

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” (Einstein, 1931).

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.” (Sagan, 1996).

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” (Sagan, 1980).

“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.” (Nye, 2012).

“To confine your attention to things that are actually under your control is a necessary condition to achieving happiness.” (Epictetus, as cited in Irvine, 2008).

“We are made of star-stuff.” (Sagan, 1973).

“The brain is wider than the sky.” (Dickinson, as cited in Ramachandran, 2011).

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.” (Steinbeck, as cited in Dutton & Aron, 1974).

“The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.” (Sagan, 1980).

“Knowledge is power.” (Bacon, 1605, as cited in Snow, 1959).

“Know thyself.” (Socrates, as cited in Plato, c. 380 BCE).

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” (Socrates, as cited in Plato, Apology, c. 399 BCE).

“Man is the measure of all things.” (Protagoras, as cited in Burnet, 1892).

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” (Nietzsche, 1882/2001).

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” (Nietzsche, 1889).

“Everything that exists is logical.” (Wittgenstein, 1922).

“I think, therefore I am.” (Descartes, 1637/1985).

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” (Whitman, as cited in Bloom, 2008).

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, c. 350 BCE).

“Fear follows error.” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, c. 65 CE).

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” (Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, c. 65 CE).

“No man ever steps in the same river twice.” (Heraclitus, as cited in Kahn, 1979).

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.” (Jobs, 2005).

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” (Jobs, 2005).

“If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.” (Hoffman, 2009).

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Kay, 1971).

“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” (Tremblay, 2012).

“Focus on being productive instead of busy.” (O’Reilly, 2013).

“Done is better than perfect.” (Sandberg, 2013).

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” (Branson, 2012).

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (African proverb, as cited by Gates, 2013).

“Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following the vision.” (Musk, 2017).

“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” (Kawasaki, 2010).

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” (Gates, 2008).

“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.” (Dahl, 1983).

“We are all broken—that’s how the light gets in.” (Hemingway, 1933).

“Not all those who wander are lost.” (Tolkien, 1954).

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” (Eliot, 1915).

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” (Dickinson, c. 1861).

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” (Hemingway, 1929).

“She wasn’t looking for a knight. She was looking for a sword.” (Attwood, 2014).

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” (Frost, 1936).

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” (Seuss, 1958).

“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.” (Tolkien, 1954).

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” (Angelou, 1969).

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.” (Brontë, 1847).

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” (Jung, 1961).

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” (Jung, 1921).

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” (Aristotle, as cited in Lerner, 2002).

“The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.” (Abraham Maslow, as cited in Hoffman, 1965).

“What a man can do, he must do.” (Adler, 1927).

“Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.” (Goethe, as cited in Bandura, 1977).

“The ego is not master in its own house.” (Freud, 1917).

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.” (Freud, 1915).

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (Franklin, as cited in Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990).

“The good life is a process, not a state of being.” (Rogers, 1961).

“People often behave in irrational ways.” (Kahneman, 2011).

“Cognitive dissonance leads to attitude change.” (Festinger, 1957).

“The mass media are the new religion of the modern world.” (McLuhan, 1964).

“All culture is fake, and all fakes are culture.” (Eco, 1985).

“The medium is the message.” (McLuhan, 1964).

“We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge.” (Toffler, 1970).

“Culture is communication and communication is culture.” (Hall, 1959).

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards.” (Thucydides, as cited in Huntington, 1957).

“Entertainment is the drug of the masses.” (Marcuse, 1964).

“Simulacra and simulations are the reality of postmodern life.” (Baudrillard, 1981).

“The public sphere is shrinking under commercial pressures.” (Habermas, 1962).

“Ideology masks the real conditions of existence.” (Althusser, 1970).

“The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.” (Debord, 1967).

“Modernity is the increasing sense of alienation in urban life.” (Simmel, 1903).

“The computer was born to solve problems that did not exist before.” (Gates, 2003).

“Technology is best when it brings people together.” (Jobs, 1997).

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” (Einstein, n.d.).

“The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” (Gates, 1996).

“Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029.” (Kurzweil, 2005).

“The pace of progress accelerates exponentially, not linearly.” (Kurzweil, 1999).

“The next big thing will be so obvious that people will say, ‘I knew that was going to happen.’” (Andreessen, 2011).

“Software is eating the world.” (Andreessen, 2011).

“We are building AI systems that learn faster than humans.” (Hassabis, 2017).

“Blockchain is the new internet.” (Tapscott, 2016).

“The cloud is the new data center.” (Ellison, 2010).

“The best innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines.” (Brown, 2009).

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” (Mandela, 2003).

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” (Franklin, as cited in Confucius, c. 500 BCE).

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.” (King, 1947).

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” (Einstein, 1936).

“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.” (Deming, 1982).

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” (Bruner, 1960).

“One book, one pen, one child can change the world.” (Yousafzai, 2013).

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” (Jim Henson, as cited in Kozol, 1991).

“Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way.” (Gardner, 1983).

“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” (Dewey, 1938).

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” (Plutarch, as cited in Sizer, 1984).

“We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.” (Loyd, 1970).

“The Earth is what we all have in common. If we can’t defend it, we lose everything.” (Berry, 1981).

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” (Native American Proverb, as cited in Waddock, 2005).

“Climate change is the fight of our lives, and we need to treat it that way.” (Thunberg, 2019).

“The environment is where we all meet; where we all have a mutual interest.” (Rachel Carson, as cited in Lear, 1988).

“Saving the planet should not be a partisan issue.” (Obama, 2015).

“We are now the asteroid.” (Woods, 2017).

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” (Lao Tzu, as cited in Capra, 1975).

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.” (Muhammad, 1979).

“The Earth is full enough. The age of expansion is over.” (Schumacher, 1973).

“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.” (Hedges, 2010).

“Protecting the environment is not liberal or conservative. It's common sense.” (Clinton, 2004).

“The future depends on what you do today.” (Gandhi, n.d.).