96 Inspirational Self-Belief Quotes to Bring Out Your Best Self

Looking for thought-provoking self-belief quotes?

Each of us has beliefs and values.

Some of these our family of origin taught us, and others we have developed as we grew older.

Most of us have beliefs in theory but have not had them tested.

Many of us have had them tested – but have not acted in support of them.

Then there are those who hold so firmly to their values they feel a calling to take action.

Beliefs are personal, unique, and typically firmly held.

Being willing not only to believe but act upon said beliefs is also an admirable quality.

If you enjoy this collection, check out our inspirational quotes category page.

Self-belief quotes about strength and spirit

The best quotes about believing in something, including your experiences and traits.

1. “Never letting the competition define you. Instead, you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about.” – Tom Chappel

2. “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world right in the eye.” – Helen Keller

3. “Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men.” – Seneca

4. “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi

5. “I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” – Thomas Paine

6. “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. “Strength is a matter of a made up mind.” – John Beecher

8. “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.” – Calvin Coolidge

9. “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do no pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for power equal to your tasks.”- Phillips Brooks

10. “Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Belief quotes to bring out your best self

11. “Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.” – Richard E. Byrd

12. “Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength.” – Henry Ward Beecher

13. “Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

14. “He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.” – J. F. Clarke

15. “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings as eagles; They shall run, and not be weary, and They shall walk, and not faint.”- [Isaiah 40:31] Bible

16. “It is not because things are different that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Anonymous

17. “The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.” – Maya Angelou

18. “I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within.” – Anonymous

19. “Man must be arched and buttressed from within, else the temple wavers to the dust.”- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

20. “When you are required to exhibit strength, it comes.” – Joseph Campbell

Self-belief quotes to ignite motivation and increase trust

21. “Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.” – Lord Chesterfield

22. “Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible – not to have run away.” – Dag Hammarskjold

23. “It is true that we shall not be able to reach perfection, but in our struggle toward it we shall strengthen our characters and give stability to our ideas, so that, whilst ever advancing calmly in the same direction, we shall be rendered capable of applying the faculties with which we have been gifted to the best possible account.” – Confucius

24. “Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on giving as good as they get.” – Elbert Hubbard

 25. “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.”- Ralph Sockman

You can find strength, happiness, and inspiration in these self-belief quotes

26. “If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have thus been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” – Charles Darwin

27. “For strength to bear is found in duty alone, and he is blest indeed who learns to make the joy of others cure his own heartache.” – Drake

28. “Thus all below is strength, and all above is grace.” – John Dryden

29. “If there is any responsibility in the cycle of life it must be that one generation owes to the next that strength by which it can come to face ultimate concerns in its own way.” – Erik Erikson

30. “Patience and time do more than strength or passion.” – Jean De La Fontaine

Quotes about belief, God, imagination, and limits

31. “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” – William James

32. “The very strength that protects the heart from injury is the strength that prevents the heart from enlarging to its intended greatness within. The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven.” – Khalil Gibran

33. “Man is what he believes.” – Anton Chekhov

34. “You can do a thing only if you have the belief that it can be done.” – Anonymous

35. “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.” – Malcolm X

36.) “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

37. “It’s what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.” – Karen Marie Moning

38. “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.”- Mahatma Gandhi

39. “What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.” – Henry Miller

40. “In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.” – John Lilly

Inspirational self-belief quotes to keep your dreams alive

41. “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

42. “By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect.” – Goethe

43. “Men willingly believe what they wish.” – Julius Caesar

44. “Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it charm.” – Jean Paul Richter

45. “What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” – Anthony Robbins

46. “It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.” – Elbert Hubbard

47. “He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.” – Ben Jonson

48. “There is no limit to what you can imagine. And with commitment, with effort, what you can imagine you can become. Put your mind to work for you. Believe that you can do it. The world will tell you that you can’t. Yet, in your belief you’ll find the strength, you’ll find the ability, to do it anyway.” – Ralph Marston

49. “The burden is equal to the horse’s strength.” – The Talmud

50. “In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fix’d: ‘t is fix’d as in a frost; contracted all, retiring to the breast; but strength of mind is exercise, not rest.” – Alexander Pope

Self-belief quotes about life and living

51. “God does not take away trials or carry us over them, but strengthens us through them.” – Edward Bouverie Pusey

52. “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

53. “This is the law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive; that surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.” – Robert W. Service

54. “There is a growing strength in women, but it is in the forehead, not in the forearm.” – Beverly Sills

55. “Native vigor of impulses and desires conserved by education and experience, the establishment of inner harmony and cooperation among the powers and capacities of the soul, the formation of a life purpose, and the direction of the individual life in accordance with the eternal principles of right that underlie human progress, these are the elements of both strength and righteousness in human character.” – Edward Sisson

56. “Above all challenge yourself. You may well surprise yourself at what strengths you have, what you can accomplish.” – Cecile Springer

57. “Our strength lies, not alone in our proving grounds and our stockpiles, but in our ideals, our goals, and their universal appeal to all men who are struggling to breathe free.” – Adlai Stevenson

58. “Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.” – Jonathan Swift

Quotes that remind you why self-belief matters

59. “My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.” – Lord Tennyson

60. “None of us can hope to get anywhere without character, moral courage and the spiritual strength to accept responsibility.” – Thomas J. Watson

61. “Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.” – Oprah Winfrey

62. “There is a comfort in the strength of love: it will make a thing endurable, which else would overset the brain, or break the heart.” – William Wordsworth

63. “When I’ve heard all I need to make a decision, I don’t take a vote. I make a decision.” – Ronald Reagan

64. “Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.” – Rabindranath Tagore

65. “Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

66. “Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.” – John F. Kennedy

Powerful self-belief quotes 

67. “Many of life’s failures are the people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison

68. “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”― Stuart Chase

69. “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung

70. “Remember that what you believe will depend very much on what you are.” – Noah Porter

71. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”― C.S. Lewis

72. “Making things happen in your life requires a faith, or an ability to believe that is unshakable, regardless of your circumstances.” – Les Brown

73. “You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.”― Neil Gaiman

74. “Belief is not a matter of choice, but conviction.” – Rising Malevolence

75. “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”― Joseph Campbell

76. “Believe and have trust and faith that you are really capable of doing what you want to do.” – Jamie Anderson

More self-belief quotes and sayings

77. “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” – Oscar Wilde

78. “Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.” – C. JoyBell C.

79. “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick

80. “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” – J. M. Barrie

81. “Be brave to stand for what you believe in even if you stand alone.” – Roy T. Bennett

82. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” – Noam Chomsky

83. “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” – Mahatma Gandhi

84. “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

85. “Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.” – Coco Chanel

86. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” – Abraham Lincoln

Self-Belief Quotes To Achieve Success

87. “The way to make your dreams come true is to start believing in them.” ― Helen Barry

88. “What I’ve learned in these 11 years is you just gotta stay focused and believe in yourself and trust your own ability and judgment.” ― Mark Cuban

89. “It is important to believe in yourself, but it is important to have sense, too.” ― Hugo Lloris

90. “Everything is possible once we believe and never relinquish hope.” ― Shadonna Richards

91. “To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no-one else will.” ― Sugar Ray Robinson

92. “Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” ― E.E. Cummings

93. “There are no shortcuts to success. You have to believe in yourself, and never give up.” ― Neha Dhupia

94. “Anything is possible once you believe you are worthy of achieving it.” ― Jason Pockrandt

95. “Your success depends mainly upon what you think of yourself and whether you believe in yourself.” ― William J.H. Boetcker

96. “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.” ― Christian Larson

Which of these self-belief quotes will you carry with you always?

Our beliefs are an integral part of who we are.

Shouldn’t our belief in ourselves demonstrate what we can do, how strong we are, and what keeps us going?

Did your self-belief get a boost from these self-belief quotes?

Let us know in the comment section below.

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