Dozens of Famous and Powerful Resilience Quotes

Why do we love quotations? Because they are like nuggets of gold; pure thoughts that can improve our thinking, self-perception, and worldview. You will see I favor my mentor and researcher Dr. Al Siebert (1934-2009). He wrote The Survivor Personality and The Resiliency Advantage.  Please let me know which of these famous and powerful resilience quotes you enjoy, or resonate with, or would edit. Ok?

Define Resilience

1. “Resiliency is something you do, more than something you have. . . You become highly resilient by continuously learning your best way of being yourself in your circumstance.” Al Siebert
2. “Resilience is overcoming adversity, whilst also potentially changing, or even dramatically transforming, (aspects of) that adversity.” Angie Hart, University of Brighton
3. “Resiliency is the ability to spring back from and successfully adapt to adversity.” Nan Henderson, author of Resiliency in Action: Practical Ideas for Overcoming Risks and Building Strengths in Youth, Families, and Communities. 
4. “Resilience or hardiness is the ability to adapt to new circumstances when life presents the unpredictable.” Salvatore R. Maddi, Psychologist and author of Resilience at Work: How to Succeed No Matter What Life Throws at You
5. “Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.” Jean Chatzky, financial journalist, and author of Money Rules: The Simple Path to Lifelong Security
6. “Resilience is knowing that you are the only one who has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up.” Mary Holloway, Writer and Resilience Coach

Expect Struggle: Demonstrate Courage

1. “The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.” Napoleon Hill (1883-1970), author of Think and Grow Rich
2. “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, author of Courage Doesn’t Always Roar
3. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” Mark Twain (1835-1910), humorist and writer
4. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
5. “To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.”  e. e. cummings (1894-1962), poet, essayist, and playwright
6. “The last of human freedoms is one’s ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning

Listen to Your Body/Emotions

1. “Resilient survivors handle their feelings well when hit with unexpected difficulties no matter how unfair. When hurt and distressed, they expect to eventually recover and find a way to have things turn our well.” Al Siebert
2. “During difficult times, an important resiliency step is being able to express your feelings in healthy ways. You can’t make feelings go away, but you can move through them.” Al Siebert
3. “The better you become at being able to recognize, verbalize, and manage your feelings, the less you will be vulnerable to losing emotional control or developing cardiovascular illnesses.” Al Siebert
4. “Anyone who tries to act as though he or she never feels upset or distressed is more fragile than people who admit they need counseling.” Al Siebert
5. “Survivors are not afraid to have feelings. You must be in touch with your body and its messages.” Bernie Siegel, MD, author of Love, Medicine & Miracles
6. “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” Audre Lorde (1934-1992), writer, feminist, and civil rights activist
7. “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Gloria Steinem, feminist, journalist, and social-political activist
8. “Cry if you want to, I won’t tell you not to. I won’t try to cheer you. I’ll just be here if you want me to be.” Cole Porter (1891-1964), composer and songwriter

Bounce Back

1. “I am down. And that is okay. I may be down for a while, but I will rise again. And when I rise, I will rise higher than I’ve gone before, I will be stronger than I’ve been before.  I will thrive.” Brian Vaszily, author of The 9 Intense Experiences: An Action Plan to Change Your Life Forever
2. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” Confucius, Ancient philosopher
3. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” Japanese Proverb
4. “The truth is that falling hurts. The dare is to keep being brave and feel your way back up.” Brene Brown, shame and vulnerability researcher, and author of Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Parent, and Lead
5. “I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” B. Priestley (1894-1984), novelist, playwright, and broadcaster
6. “Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” Nelson Mandela, South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and Prime Minister

Deal with Change and Loss

1. “When you are hit with life-disrupting events, you will never be the same again. You either cope or you crumble; you become better or bitter; you emerge stronger or weaker.” Al Siebert
2. “Things do not change; we change.” Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862), essayist, philosopher, abolitionist
3. “Change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.” Robert Gallagher, editorial photographer
4. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” Maya Angelou (1928-2014), poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist
5. “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” Margaret Mead (1901-1978), author and anthropologist
6. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948), leader of the Indian independence movement against British
7. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Alan Watts (1915-1973), philosopher, speaker, and interpreter of Eastern philosophy

Manage Your Stress

1. “What most people call stress is really an internal, physical feeling of anxiety or strain that they don’t like. This is not just semantics. Stress is the external pressure, strain is the internal effect.” Al Siebert
2. “It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it. . . Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one.” Hans Selye (1907-1982), endocrinologist and stress researcher
3. “Stress will break people altogether if they are in the beginning too weak to stand distress, or else, if they are already strong enough to take the stress in the first place, that same stress, if they come through it, will strengthen them, temper them, and make them stronger.” Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), psychologist, creator of Maslow’s hierarchy of need, and author of Toward a Psychology of Being
4. “The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still going to be a rat.“ Lily Tomlin, comedian, and actress
5.  “Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.” Richard Carlson, psychotherapist, and author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and It’s All Small Stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

Edit Your Thoughts and Talk

1. “Your mind and attitudes create either barriers or bridges to good outcomes.” Al Siebert
2. “Negative self-talk will weaken your self-concept and can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who think ‘I’m a loser’ or ‘I’m a failure as a manager’ tend to act in a way that confirms those beliefs. People who think ‘I’m adaptable’ or ‘I’m a good friend’ will tend to act in ways to confirm those beliefs.” Al Siebert
3. “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955), theoretical physicist
4. “Wings are not only for birds; they are also for minds. Human potential stops at some point somewhere beyond infinity.” Toller Cranston (1949-2015), Olympic figure skater and painter.
5. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” Helen Keller (1880-1969), deaf-blind author and political activist
6. “I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.” Oprah Winfrey, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
7. “The mind is its own place and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.”  John Milton (1608-1674), poet and man of letters
8. “Thinking is easy, acting difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action, the most difficult thing in the world.” Goethe, ancient philosopher
9. “The person who is not hungry says that the coconut has a hard shell.” African Tribal Saying

Avoid Seeing Yourself As a Victim

1. “Blaming others for how bad things are for you, keeps you in a non-resilient victim state in which you do not take resiliency actions.” Al Siebert
2. “The key to making your life better is to stop blaming others for triggering reactions in you that you don’t like. The problem is not what others do; it is your reaction to what they do.” Al Siebert
3. “A Child Called It was a story about resilience, it was never about boo-hoo-hoo. It was about a kid that didn’t quit.” Dave Pelzer, survivor of extreme parental abuse and author of A Child Called It: One Child’s Courage to Survive
4. “When we learn to deal directly with our complaints and difficulties, romanticized ideas about the spiritual path are no longer meaningful.  We see that what is important is to take responsibility for ourselves, and to always be aware of our thoughts, feelings, and actions.” Tarthang Tulku, Tibetan teacher, and Buddhist
5. “Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.” Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) author of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
6. “There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.” Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), educator and presidential advisor
7. “I didn’t give up. I am not a victim, and that is my proudest accomplishment.” Suzanne Somers, actor and author of After the Fall: How I Picked Myself Up, Dusted Myself Off, and Started All Over Again

Treasure Your Relationships

1. “You recover better when you tell your family, a friend, or a support group what you are feeling. If you’d like them just to listen and not problem solve while you talk, let them know. If you want some suggestions and coaching on what to do, let them know that.” Al Siebert
2. “Find a survivor who can be a role model for you. For me it is Lassie: whenever I run into difficulties I ask myself, “What would Lassie do now?” Bernie Siegel, MD, author of Love, Medicine, and Miracles
3. “You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces – my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.” Elizabeth Edwards (1949-2010), attorney and author of Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities
4. “Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin (1903-1977), diarist, and novelist
5. “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.” Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions
6. “Nourishing relationships is the single most universally agreed-upon feature of the good life.” Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Take Action

1. “A few people are born resilient. The rest of us need to work consciously at developing our abilities.” Al Siebert
2. “Resilient children tend to have parents who are concerned with their children’s education, who participate in that education, who direct their children’s everyday task, and who are aware of their children’s interests and goals.” Linda F. Winfield, author of Developing Resilience in Urban Youth
3. “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993), minister, and author of The Power of Positive Thinking

Notice the Gifts of Your Adversity

1. “Adversity reveals genius.” Horace, Roman poet
2. “Adversity introduces us to ourselves.” W. Mitchell, speaker, and author of It’s Not What Happens to You–It’s What You Do About It
3. “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosopher, poet, and Greek scholar
4. “A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a person perfected without trials.” Chinese Proverb
5. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” Napoleon Hill (1883-1970), author of The Power of Positive Thinking
6. “Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.” Lou Holtz, football player, coach, and analyst
7. “In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life.” Albert Bandura, psychologist
8. “It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setbacks.” Bob Richards, space entrepreneur
9. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), essayist, lecturer, and poet
10. “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” Helen Keller Helen Keller (1880-1969), deaf-blind author and political activist

Remember, You’re Stronger than you think

1. “Strong people don’t put others down.  They lift them up.”  Michael P. Watson, professional boxer
2. “Our resilience increases as we recognize the magnitude of what we have already accomplished.” Patricia O’Gorman, author of Dancing Backwards In High Heels: How Women Master the Art of Resilience
3. “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004), psychiatrist, and author of On Death and Dying

Help Boost Others

1. “Empathy for other people’s feelings requires a counter-balancing quality of toughness to not be controlled by their pain.” Al Siebert
2. “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Edith Wharton (1862-1937), novelist, and designer
3. “If I am not for me, who will be? If I am only for me, what is the point.” Hillel, fifth century Jewish Leader
4. “Our primary purpose is the help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” Dalai Lama, Tibetan leader

Lighten Up

1. “The most resilient people are like playful, curious children.” Al Siebert
2. “Taking time to laugh, appreciate pleasant moments, and smell the roses daily affects your brain and nervous system in ways that enhance your problem-solving skills, and this, in turn, increased your resiliency.” Al Siebert
3.  “Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.” Hugh Sidey (1927-2005), Life Magazine journalist
4.  “Humor has bailed me out of more tight situations than I can think of. If you go with your instincts and keep your humor, creativity follows. With luck, success comes too.”  Jimmy Buffett, musician, actor and businessman
5. “Cracked up by life with a laugh that’s known bitter but, past it, got better.” Jayne Relaford Brown, poet
6. “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.”  Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) clergyman and social reformer
7.  “My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke. I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.” Maya Angelou (1928-2014), poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist

Please share your one, two or three favorite resilience quotes with us. OK?

Please check out these related posts:

• How Your Resilience is Like a Rubber Band
• The Keys to Boost Your Attitude of Gratitude
• Resilience to the Ups and Downs of Life

Patricia Morgan MA CCC helps her readers, clients, and audiences lighten their load, brighten their outlook, and strengthen their resilience. To go from woe to WOW call 403.242.7796 or email a request.

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