This is a compilation of thoughts and quotes that I have found or written recently, as well as many that I've collected throughout the years. Most thoughts are posted randomly, as I feel inspired. A listing of quotes can be found alphabetically (check the 2008 and 2009 archives listing), or by source.

Feel free to suggest additions!


“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” – Proverbs 23:7

Monday, January 5, 2009

Potential / Possible Quotes

1. Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself. - Joel Hawes

2. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. - T.S. Eliot

3. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. - Unknown

4. The impossible is often the untried. - Jim Goodwin

5. Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work. - Bette Davis

6. It's kind of fun to do the impossible. – Walt Disney

7. Your only boundaries are the ones you create in your mind. - Unknown

8. With God you can go to the moon - without him you had better not walk out your front door. - Unknown

9. It is better to err on the side of daring than the side of caution. - Alvin Toffler

10. Too low they build who build beneath the stars. - Edward Young

11. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration. - James Allen

12. A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. - Walter Gagehot

13. To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. - Robert Louis Stevenson

14. Do not think what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. - Marcus Aurelius

15. Treat people as if they were what they should be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming. - Johann von Goethe

16. Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?' - Robert Kennedy

17. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. - Antoine de Saint Exupery

18. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true. - James Branch Cabell

19. The greatest limitations you will ever face will be those you place on yourself. - Denis Waitley

20. If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise. - Robert Fritz

21. We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. - Charles Swindoll

22. We can become anything. That is why injustice is impossible here. There may be the accident of birth, there is no accident of death. Nothing forces us to remain what we were. - John Berger

23. Unfortunately, many people don’t dare to dream about what they can achieve. They lock their greatness away, afraid of their own vast potential. Instead of stepping out of their comfort zone, they deny life’s possibilities and choose to live safe...and small. It is said that the greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we are capable of becoming. - Darren Hardy

24. Continuous efforts, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential. – Sir Winston Churchill

25. A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

26. Sail beyond the horizon; fly higher than you ever thought possible; magnify your existence by helping others; be kind to people and animals of all shapes and sizes; be true to what you value most; shine your light on the world; and be the person you were born to be. - Blake Beattie

27. We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential. - Ellen Goodman

28. Things are only impossible until they're not. - Jean Luc Picard

29. I cannot stay quietly rooted anywhere because of the many sides of myself constantly sprouting, the layers of latent mysteries, the things I am not yet. - Anais Nin

30. When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either. - Leo Burnett

31. Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future. - Marilyn Ferguson

32. Start by doing what's necessary, then what's possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible. - St. Francis of Assisi

33. There is always room in your life for thinking bigger, pushing limits, imagining the impossible! - Tony Robbins

34. You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. - Friedrich Nietzsche

35. Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon...must inevitably come to pass. - Paul J. Meyer

36. The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often merely the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible. - Richard M. DeVos

37. If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been. - Robert H. Schuller

38. The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become. - Ben Herbster

39. We all have possibilities we don't know about. We can do things we don't even dream we can do. - Dale Carnegie

40. The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. - Eden Phillpotts

41. Even a fool knows you can't touch the stars, but it doesn't stop a wise man from trying. - Harry Anderson

42. The only limits to the possibilities in your life tomorrow are the buts you use today. - Les Brown

43. I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done. - Henry Ford

44. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime, let out all the length of all the reins. - Cholmondeley

45. When the impossibility has been eliminated, whatever remains, no matter how improbable...is possible. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

46. Oh man! There is no planet, sun or star that could hold you, if you but knew what you are. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

47. Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was. - Dag Hammarskjold

48. Nothing is impossible. The word itself says I'm possible. - Audrey Hepburn

49. We are unlimited beings. We have no ceiling. The capabilities and the talents and the gifts and the power that is within every single individual that is on this planet, is unlimited. - Michael Beckwith

50. The possibilities are unlimited as long as you are true to your life's purpose. - Marcia Wieder

51. Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible. - Frank Gaines

52. Your thoughts are like feathers, build your wings and fly to the summits of your potential, where your greatness lies beyond the reach of apathy. - Dodinsky

53. We have more strength than will; and when we say things are impossible, it is often just excuses we make for ourselves. - Francois De La Rochefoucauld

54. Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing. - John Andrew Holmes

55. Impossibilities are merely things which we have not yet learned. - Charles W. Chesnutt

56. We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible. -Chretien Malesherbes

57. We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are. - Max DePree

58. The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. - Ivy Baker Priest

59. It is only by releasing ourselves from our self-imposed limits that we can finally see the power and beauty inside each of us. - John Bingham

60. Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize. - Norman Vincent Peale

61. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. - Michelangelo

62. The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette. - Henry S. Haskins

63. To the timid and hesitating everything is impossible because it seems so. - Sir Walter Scott

64. I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible. - Henry Ford

65. The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility. - Charles F. Kettering

66. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done. - Helen Keller

67. I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso

68. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. - Seneca

69. When you’ve exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t! - Robert Schuller

70. Possibilitizing is overcoming while you’re undergoing. - Robert Schuller

71. No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime. - James T. Mccay

72. A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done. - Vince Lombardi 

73. If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves. - Thomas A. Edison

74. We never know how high we are till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the skies. - Emily Dickinson

75. Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being. - Charles Dudley Warner

76. I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been. - Sam Walton

77. When I open my eyes in the morning, I am not confronted by a world, but by a million possible worlds. - Colin Wilson

78. Anything you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must come to reality. - Paul J. Meyer

79. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime, let out all the length of all the reins. - Mary Cholmondeley

80. It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist. - Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

81. It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where people don’t care to do anything, they shelter themselves under a permission that it cannot be done. - Bishop Robert South

82. Man can only receive what he sees himself receiving. - Florence Scovel Shinn

83. If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! - Soren Kierkegaard

84. Few men during their lifetime comes anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used. - Richard E. Byrd

85. Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again. - James R. Cook

86. Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

87. No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime. - James T. Mccay

88. There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become. - Orison Swett Marden

89. Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion: The potential for greatness lives within each of us. - Wilma Rudolph

90. We fail to see that we can control our own destiny; make ourselves do whatever is possible; make ourselves become whatever we long to be. - Orison Swett Marden

91. It is not a lucky word, this name "impossible"; no good comes of those who have it so often in their mouths. - Thomas Carlyle

92. To achieve the impossible, you need to first develop the mindset that it's probable. Please don't allow the current limits of your life define your future reality. You deserve so much better. And the world deserves your best. - Robin Sharma

93. Excuses excuse us from fulfilling our potential. - Rhonda Britten

94. The law of self-fulfilling prophecy says that you get what you expect. So why not create great expectations and the highest vision possible of yourself and your world? - Mark Victor Hansen

95. Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire. - Orison Swett Marden

96. The number one cause of unfulfilled potential is never deciding that NOW matters more than any other time in your life. - Hal Elrod

97. How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable? - Seth Godin

98. Somewhere in the world, someone is doing something that you decided couldn't be done. - Seth Godin

99. Link yourself to your potential, not to your past. - Stephen Covey

100. You must not let anyone define your limits because of where you come from. Your only limit is your soul. - Walt Disney

101. Don't underestimate yourself. You are capable of more than you can ever imagine. - Les Brown

102. There are acres of diamonds in the problem you have before you right now. - Brian Tracy

103. Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can. - Willis R. Whitney

104. The only honest measure of your success is what you are doing compared to your true potential. - Paul J. Meyer

105. Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action. - Orison Swett Marden

106. Every human mind is a great slumbering power until awakened by a keen desire and by definite resolution to do. - Edgar F. Roberts

107. You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world. - Sheila Graham

108. Nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds talents and abilities of which we are not aware. - Francois de la Rochefoucauld

109. We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible. - Vince Lombardi

110. The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious. - John Scully

111. You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life. - James G. Bilkey

112. The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles Du Bos

113. It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don’t. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever. - Phillip Adams

114. Don’t let others define you. Don’t let the past confine you. Take charge of your life with confidence and determination and there are no limits on what you can do or be. - Michael Josephson

115. No matter what the level of your ability, you have more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime. - James T. McCay

116. The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do. - Orison Swett Marden

117. The function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential. - Bruce Lee

118. What you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. - D.H. Lawrence

119. Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe. - Gail Devers

120. Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities -- always see them, for they're always there. - Norman Vincent Peale

121. Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. - Maxwell Maltz

122. All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success. - Dorothea Brande

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