100+ MLA Quote Examples & Copywriting Tips for Perfect Citations

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

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

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

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there” (Theodore Roosevelt).

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

“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going” (Sam Levenson).

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today” (Franklin D. Roosevelt).

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life” (Steve Jobs).

“The harder you work for something, the greater you’ll feel when you achieve it” (Anonymous).

“Dream big and dare to fail” (Norman Vaughan).

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can” (Arthur Ashe).

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream” (C.S. Lewis).

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen 1).

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” (Fitzgerald 180).

“Call me Ishmael” (Melville 1).

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy 1).

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (Dickens 1).

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me” (Brontë 233).

“To be, or not to be, that is the question” (Shakespeare 3.1.58).

“Big Brother is watching you” (Orwell 4).

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree” (Coleridge 1-2).

“Do I dare disturb the universe?” (Eliot 45).

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together” (Salinger 125).

“The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” (Wordsworth 1-2).

“I think, therefore I am” (Descartes 17).

“The unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato 38a).

“God is dead” (Nietzsche 125).

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself” (Sartre 22).

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” (Aristotle 1104b).

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how” (Nietzsche 83).

“Everything that exists is logical” (Wittgenstein 1.1).

“Freedom is the recognition of necessity” (Hegel).

“To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom” (Socrates, qtd. in Plato 216a).

“Doubt is the origin of wisdom” (Augustine).

“Existence precedes essence” (Sartre 23).

“Happiness depends upon ourselves” (Aristotle 1097b).

“Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another” (Covey 54).

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader” (John Quincy Adams).

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way” (Maxwell).

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” (Jobs).

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers” (Rost 112).

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results” (Drucker).

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them” (Rhyne).

“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things” (Ronald Reagan).

“People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision” (Maxwell 17).

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit” (Arnold).

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it” (Eisenhower).

“The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are” (Lowe).

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies” (Aristotle).

“Where there is love, there is life” (Gandhi).

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides” (Haruki Murakami).

“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved” (George Eliot).

“Love makes a short absence long, and a long presence short” (Charles Caleb Colton).

“We loved with a love that was strong than the love of mortals” (Poe 14).

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams” (Dr. Seuss).

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage” (Lao Tzu).

“Love is not about how many days, months, or years you have been together. Love is about how much you love each other every single day” (Anonymous).

“When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew” (William Shakespeare).

“To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return” (Margaret Mitchell).

“Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile” (Franklin P. Jones).

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” (Churchill).

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it” (Thoreau).

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure” (Colin Powell).

“Success is not in what you have, but who you are” (Bo Bennett).

“The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same” (Colin R. Davis).

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered” (Orison Swett Marden).

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value” (Einstein).

“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary” (Vidal Sassoon).

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out” (Robert Collier).

“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally” (David Frost).

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” (Winston Churchill).

“Opportunities don't happen. You create them” (Chris Grosser).

“Creativity is intelligence having fun” (Einstein).

“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense” (Pablo Picasso).

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” (Steve Jobs).

“To innovate, you must fail” (Richard Branson).

“The creative adult is the child who survived” (Ursula K. Le Guin).

“Art challenges society, and society attacks art” (John Ciardi).

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

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all” (Oscar Wilde).

“The world always seems brighter when you’ve just made something that wasn’t there before” (Neil Gaiman).

“Creativity takes courage” (Henri Matisse).

“The imagination is the workshop of the mind” (Wilma Z. McNaughton).

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

“Fall seven times, stand up eight” (Japanese Proverb).

“Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other” (Walter Elliot).

“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up” (Vince Lombardi).

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” (Confucius).

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up” (Mary Holloway).

“Strength does not come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t” (Rikki Rogers).

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny” (C.S. Lewis).

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow’” (Mary Anne Radmacher).

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated” (Maya Angelou).

“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance” (Jodi Picoult).

“Persistence guarantees that results are inevitable” (Paramahansa Yogananda).

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on” (Franklin D. Roosevelt).

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

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever” (Gandhi).

“The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take it away from you” (B.B. King).

“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence” (Abigail Adams).

“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change” (Carl Rogers).

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” (William Butler Yeats).

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty” (Henry Ford).

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” (Benjamin Franklin).

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” (Benjamin Franklin).

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet” (Aristotle).

“Knowledge is power” (Francis Bacon).

“Learning never exhausts the mind” (Leonardo da Vinci).

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst” (William Penn).

“Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans” (John Lennon).

“The trouble is, you think you have time” (Buddha).

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time” (Bertrand Russell).

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change” (Jim Rohn).

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why” (Mark Twain).

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself” (George Bernard Shaw).

“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying ‘I don’t want to’” (Lao Tzu).

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” (Walt Disney).

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated” (Confucius).

“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment” (Buddha).

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind” (Nathaniel Hawthorne).