Inspiring Quotes From 100 Extraordinary Women

"Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement." - Golda Meir
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Tina Fey arrives at ELLE's 21st annual Women In Hollywood Awards at the Four Season Hotel on Monday, Oct. 20, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Tina Fey arrives at ELLE's 21st annual Women In Hollywood Awards at the Four Season Hotel on Monday, Oct. 20, 2014, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Most lists of motivational quotes are dominated by the counsel of men, and it certainly isn't because women lack words of wisdom. So, I curated a list of my favorite quotes -- from luminaries living and dead, activists and athletes, authors and actors, leaders and lovers -- all women. Each of these is powerful in its own right; together, they form a motivational stew, encouraging you to seize life and sprint towards success.

1. "If I stop to kick every barking dog I am not going to get where I'm going." - Jackie Joyner-Kersee

2. "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement." - Helen Keller

3. "You are the one that possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness." - Diane von Furstenberg

4. "I was smart enough to go through any door that opened." - Joan Rivers

5. "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations can never effect a reform." - Susan B. Anthony

6. "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful." - Malala Yousafzai

7. "Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement." - Golda Meir

8. "Knowing what must be done does away with fear." - Rosa Parks

9. "I didn't get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it." - Estée Lauder

10. "Power's not given to you. You have to take it." - Beyoncé Knowles Carter

11. "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity." - Amelia Earhart

12. "The difference between successful people and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves." - Barbara Corcoran

13. "You can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them." - Shonda Rhimes

14. "I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done." - Lucille Ball

15. "I hope the fathers and mothers of little girls will look at them and say 'yes, women can.'" - Dilma Rousseff

16. "Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins." - Edith Wharton

17. "If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." - Erica Jong

18. "I have stood on a mountain of no's for one yes." - B. Smith

19. "The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice." - Peggy O'Mara

20. "You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe." - Leymah Gbowee

21. "If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one." - Dolly Parton

22. "If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities." - Ann Richards

23. "You can't give up! If you give up, you're like everybody else." - Chris Evert

24. "No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth." - Martha Beck

25. "Done is better than perfect." - Sheryl Sandberg

26. "One of the secrets to staying young is to always do things you don't know how to do, to keep learning." - Ruth Reichl

27. "Be first and be lonely." - Ginni Rometty

28. "One cannot accomplish anything without fanaticism." - Eva Perón

29. "Look your best - who said love is blind?" - Mae West

30. "It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent." - Madeleine Albright

31. "Don't take too much credit for your children -- or too much blame!" - Debora Spar

32. "You can imprison a man, but not an idea. You can exile a man, but not an idea. You can kill a man, but not an idea." - Benazir Bhutto

33. "Step out of the history that is holding you back. Step into the new story you are willing to create." - Oprah Winfrey

34. "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." - Jane Goodall

35. "I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything." - Condoleezza Rice

36. "I may be wearing makeup, but I can throw a fastball by you at the same time." - Jennie Finch

37. "A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution." - Angela Merkel

38. "A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done." - Marge Piercy

39. "I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life." - Louise Hay

40. "Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper." - Julia Child

41. "If your home environment is good and peaceful and easy, your life is better and easier." - Lori Greiner

42. "In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different." - Coco Chanel

43. "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." - Ayn Rand

44. "Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." - Mother Teresa

45. "Take criticism seriously, but not personally. If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you." - Hillary Clinton

46. "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak." - Audre Lorde

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47. "Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself." - Eleanor Roosevelt

48. "Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation." - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

49. "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." - Nora Ephron

50. "You should treat your marriage like a business that you wouldn't want to let fail." - Lisa Ling

51. "It's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody." - Maya Angelou

52. "Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." - Simone de Beauvoir

53. "If you're not making some notable mistakes along the way, you're certainly not taking enough business and career chances." - Sallie Krawcheck

54. "A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence." - Sonia Sotomayor

55. "Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for." - Jennifer Lopez

56. "You can be the lead in your own life." - Kerry Washington

57. "When you feel copied, remember that people can only go where you have already been, they have no idea where you are going next." - Liz Lange*

58. "You can't please everyone, and you can't make everyone like you." - Katie Couric

59. "No one changes the world who isn't obsessed." - Billie Jean King

60. "Hold your head and your standards high even as people or circumstances try to pull you down." - Tory Johnson*

61. "The best thing to hold onto in life is each other." - Audrey Hepburn

62. "Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from." - Jodie Foster

63. "I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

64. "I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that's not pulling the trigger." - Mia Hamm

65. "When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it." - Madonna

66. "Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it." - Brene Brown

67. "I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself." - Arianna Huffington

68. "I'm always perpetually out of my comfort zone." - Tory Burch

69. "If you can't go straight ahead, you go around the corner." - Cher

70. "If you don't get out of the box you've been raised in, you won't understand how much bigger the world is." - Angelina Jolie

71. "Everyone shines, given the right lighting." - Susan Cain

72. "If you're someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that's a sign of a life lived honorably." - Rachel Maddow

73. "When you embrace your difference, your DNA, your look or heritage or religion or your unusual name, that's when you start to shine." - Bethenny Frankel

74. "You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute." - Tina Fey

75. "If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing." - Margaret Thatcher

76. "The challenge is not to be perfect...it's to be whole." - Jane Fonda

77. "Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance." - Anne Lamott

78. "There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there." - Indira Gandhi

79. "All careers go up and down like friendships, like marriages, like anything else, and you can't bat a thousand all the time." - Julie Andrews

80. "If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you've got to let it go." - Sara Blakely

81. "This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is, and that dream continues." - Diana Nyad

82. "You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't." - Annie Leibovitz

83. "If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love." - Princess Diana

84. "We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." - J.K. Rowling

85. "When you're through changing, you're through." - Martha Stewart

86. "We need to start work with the idea that we're going to learn every day. I learn, even at my position, every single day." - Chanda Kochhar

87. "Cherish forever what makes you unique, cuz you're really a yawn if it goes." - Bette Midler

88. "Style is a way to say who you are without having to speak." - Rachel Zoe

89. "Dying seems less sad than having lived too little." - Gloria Steinem

90. "When I believe in something, I'm like a dog with a bone." - Melissa McCarthy

91. "Women asking for raises should not only know their value, but they should ask with the confidence that they're helping the company to be successful." - Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

92. "Whenever you are blue or lonely or stricken by some humiliating thing you did, the cure and the hope is in caring about other people." - Diane Sawyer

93. "I need to listen well so that I hear what is not said." - Thuli Madonsela

94. "I try to live in a little bit of my own joy and not let people steal it or take it." - Hoda Kotb

95. "It's not the absence of fear, it's overcoming it. Sometimes you've got to blast through and have faith." - Emma Watson

96. "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anaïs Nin

97. "I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that's ever happened to me has taught me compassion." - Ellen DeGeneres

98. "When I'm tired, I rest. I say, 'I can't be a superwoman today.'" - Jada Pinkett Smith

99. "Don't live life in the past lane." - Samantha Ettus

100. "Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it." - Harper Lee

*These quotes were directly emailed to the author.

Samantha Ettus is a work/life balance expert obsessed with helping women reach their potential. Connect with her here.

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