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100 Short Positive Personal Growth Quotes for that Self Improvement Journey

We all hope we continue to grow and improve throughout our life, and we have put together a list of all the best personal growth quotes to share these thoughts with your next post. And if you’re looking for short personal growth quotes for Instagram, we also have you covered.

Now go ahead and browse through to find your favorite.

Short Personal Growth Quotes

“We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Believing takes practice.” – Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“One day or day one. You decide.” – Unknown

“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” – Rumi

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.” – Jim Rohn

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin

A short personal growth quote by Cameron

“Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.” – Albert Einstein

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

“A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for.” – Marcus Aurelius

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” – Helen Keller

“In our struggle for freedom, truth is the only weapon we possess.” – The Dalai Lama

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” – J.K. Rowling

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein

“The only person who can really motivate you is you.” – Shaquille O’Neal

“Be the change you want to see in this world.” – Gandhi

“Don’t go through life, grow through life.” – Eric Butterworth

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Person hiking on snow with short quotes about change by Maxwell

“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” – Voltaire

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ― Dr. Seuss

“I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

“If you quit once it becomes a habit. Don’t quit.” – Michael Jordan

“Learn to work harder on yourself than on your job.” – Jim Rohn

“There’s no such thing as failure, only results.” – Tony Robbins

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

“Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude toward us.” – John N. Mitchell

“The only journey is the journey within.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.“ – Harry Golden

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

“Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.” – W. Clement Stone

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” E.E. Cummings

“Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson

Mountain and lakes with short powerful inspirational quotes by Shaw

“The only time you fail is when you fall down and stay down.” ― Stephen Richards

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

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

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

“Every moment is a fresh beginning.” – T. S. Eliot

“It is kind of fun to do the impossible.” – Walt Disney

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” – Margaret Thatcher

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James

“Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.” – Jean Vanier

“We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.” – Helen Keller

“It never gets easier. You just get better.” – Jordan Hoechlin

“Every flower blooms at a different pace.” – Suzy Kassem

A short positive growth mindset quote by Maraboli

“You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.” ― Joseph Campbell

“Being realistic is the most commonly traveled road to mediocrity.” – Will Smith

“You’re never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis

“There is no failure. Only feedback.” – Robert Allen

“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” – W. Clement Stone

“Mistakes aren’t mistakes, they are lessons!” – Israelmore Ayivor

“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth

“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat.” – Sheryl Sandberg

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” ― Michael Cunningham

“Becoming is better than being.” – Carol Dweck

“Success is not an accident, success is a choice.” – Stephen Curry

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

“Smart is something you become, not something you are.” – Unknown

“What we think, we become.” – Buddha

A short growth mindset quote by Maslow

“A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” – Epictetus

 “Always do what you are afraid of doing.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All things are difficult before they are easy.” – Thomas Fuller

“The expert on anything was once a beginner.” – Helen Hayes

“They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” – Confucius

“A challenge only becomes an obstacle when you bow to it.” – Ray Davis

“Nothing is impossible. The word itself says, I’m possible.” – Audrey Hepburn

If you like these, you might also want to check out our other lists of Growth Mindset Quotes for Women, Self Change Quotes, Encouraging Quotes, Stay Positive Quotes and Inspirational Quotes for Today.

Positive Personal Growth Quotes

“If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” – Frank A. Clark

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.” – Amit Ray

“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh

“The problem human beings face is not that we aim too high and fail, but we aim too low and succeed.” – Michelangelo

A positive Personal growth quote by Hill

“You cannot go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis

“There’s only one investment that will never go down — an investment in yourself.” ― Frank Sonnenberg

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart

“The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person’s determination.” – Tommy Lasorda

“Do not let the memories of your past limit the potential of your future. There are no limits to what you can achieve on your journey through life, except in your mind.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” — Bruce Lee

“The more you believed in yourself, the more you could trust yourself. The more you trust yourself, the less you compare yourself to others.” ― Roy T. Bennett

Castle with Inspirational princess Instagram quotes by Merida

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill

“Reality is a projection of your thoughts or the things you habitually think about.” ― Stephen Richards

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”– Dr. Seuss

“Work hard now. Don’t wait. If you work hard enough, you’ll be given what you deserve.” – Shaquille O’Neal

“At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.” – Michelle Obama

“Ask yourself if what you’re doing today is getting you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.” – Anonymous

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it. Rather, it’s that we aim too low and we reach it.” – Michelangelo

“Personal development is a major time-saver. The better you become, the less time it takes you to achieve your goals.” – Brian Tracy

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” – Bernice Johnson Reagon

Man on cliff with quotes about change and growth by Gail Sheehy

 “Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions.  Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.” — Mark Twain

“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”  – Helen Keller

 “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” – Buddha

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” – James Allen

“What holds most people back isn’t the quality of their ideas, but their lack of faith in themselves. You have to live your life as if you are already where you want to be.” – Russell Simmons

“You are essentially who you create yourself to be and all that occurs in your life is the result of your own making.” – Stephen Richards

“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.” – Don Miguel Ruiz

Hiker in mountains with short inspirational change quotes by Devito

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

“Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.” — Bruce Lee

“I’ve got a theory that if you give 100% all the time, somehow things will work out in the end.” – Larry Bird

“The swiftest way to triple your success is to double your investment in personal development.” – Robin Sharma

“The important thing is that we must be constantly moving forward – yes, the progressive realization of a predetermined goal. And our growth should never end.” – OgMandino

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” — Helen Keller

HIker by lake with short self change quotes by Bennett

“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and start being excited about what could go right.” – Unknown

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

“Ability may take you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.” — William Blake

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Treat yourself as you are, and you will remain as you are. Treat yourself as you could be, and you will become what you should be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.” – Richard Branson

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” – Steve Maraboli

“You have to begin to tell the story of your life as you now want it to be and discontinue the tales of how it has been or of how it is.” – Esther and Jerry Hicks

“Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.” – John C Maxwell

Hiker looking at mountains with self change quotes by James

“We are either moving forward or moving backward. There is no such thing as standing still.”― Becky Williamson-Martin

“By doing the work to love ourselves more, I believe we will love each other better.” – Laverne Cox

“Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.” ― Brian Weiss

“Dependent people need others to get what they want.  Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts.  Interdependent people combine their own efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.” — Stephen Covey

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning.” – Carol Dweck

“Improving yourself is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others.” – Dale Carnegie

Sunset over city with short inspirational life quotes by Coelho

“Permit yourself to change your mind when something is no longer working for you.” – Nedra Glover Tawwab

“But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.” – Stephen R. Covey

“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill

“If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it.” – Muhammad Ali

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

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” – Eckhart Tolle

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass… it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” – William Shakespeare

“You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.” – Shonda Rhimes

“I would like to think that all of my successes in life are really just the fruit of my failures.” – Yvie Oddly

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss

Person looking at volcano with short life quotes about change by Obiang

“Without continuous personal development, you are now all that you will ever become.” – Eli Cohen

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

“Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life.” – Deborah Day

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain

“Let us make our future now, and let us make our dreams tomorrow’s reality.” – Malala Yousafzai

“How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ― June Ahern

“Be patient with yourself. You are growing stronger every day. The weight of the world will become lighter…and you will begin to shine brighter. Don’t give up.” – Robert Tew

Sand dune with short quotes to inspire a new beginning by T.S. Eliot

“Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.” – Zig Ziglar

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but building the new.”

Believe in yourself, your abilities and your own potential. Never let self-doubt hold you captive. You are worthy of all that you dream of and hope for.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” – Paulo Coelho

“Children love this idea that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger as they use it.” – Carol Dweck

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Will Durant

“The secret to life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” – Paulo Coelho

“If the people in your circle aren’t contributing to your growth, then you’re not in a circle… you’re in a cage.”― Kianu Starr

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you…never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn now to do it.” – Vincent Van Gogh

Red flower with inspiring short quotes about change by Jack Welch

 “Just because you haven’t found your talent yet doesn’t mean you don’t have one.” – Kermit the Frog

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” — Vince Lombardi

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.” – Henry Ward Beecher

“Personal development is the belief that you are worth the effort, time, and energy needed to develop yourself.” ― Denis Waitley

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”  Mark Twain

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” – Abraham Maslow

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs

“Happiness comes from within. It is not dependent on external things or on other people. You become vulnerable and can be easily hurt when your feelings of security and happiness depend on the behavior and actions of other people. Never give your power to anyone else.” ― Brian Weiss

“If you are moving forward in your life, ifyou are progressing personally, professionally emotionally, spiritually–you will be happy.” – Tony Robbins

“If you don’t behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.” ― Fulton J. Sheen

Sunrise with short quotes to inspire you by Albert Einstein

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” — Jimmy Johnson

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. – Mark Twain

“It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.” – Steve Maraboli

“It’s your life; you don’t need someone’s permission to live the life you want. Be brave to live from your heart.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of being.” – John Wooden

“I don’t have to be what nobody else wants me to be and I am not afraid to be what I want to be.” — Muhammad Ali

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picasso

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” – Carrie Fisher

“I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance.  It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” — John D. Rockefeller

“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not the attainment; full effort is full victory.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles Swindoll

“A good criterion for measuring success in life is the number of people you have made happy.” — Robert J. Lumsden

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

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make a mistake.” – Elbert Hubbard

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“If you can’t fly, then run if you can’t run, then walk if you can’t walk, then crawl whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King

Sunset over mountains wtih deep life quotes about happiness by Rast

“Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor Frankl

“A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.” — La Rochefoucauld

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”- Edith Wharton

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor E. Frankl

“Improve by 1% a day, and in just 70 days, you’re twice as good.” – Alan Weiss

So that is it for our list of Personal Growth Quotes. We hope you found the perfect one!

Woman holding up a clear chunk of ice on the beach

About the Author

Laynni Locke

I am Laynni Locke, a Canadian writer, reader and traveller with a passion for sharing life’s moments on social media. Keeping friends and family in the loop of our lives though photos and videos has become an essential activity for most.

And it doesn’t matter if you are travelling, celebrating a special occasion or just appreciating day-to-day life, when you take that perfect photo you are going to need the perfect caption or quote before you share it. Which is why we started Routinely Shares, providing comprehensive lists of quotes and captions to cover every occasion, adventure or loved one.

With extensive experience as a travel writer, social media specialist and grant writer, I have made it my mission to curate the best and easiest to use lists for your next post.

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