Photo credit: janeb13, Attitude Quotes and Sayings
Over 60 Attitude quotes and sayings
Couldn’t have agreed more with Winston Churchill when he said that attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. In fact, attitude makes a big difference in all areas of our lives? Change our attitude towards life through these 60+ Attitude quotes and sayings, and life’s attitude towards us will change too. Remember, we have power over our mind – not outside events.
1. To make the world a better place, see the world as a better place.
Quit worrying about whether or not you are in the band, and just play your instrument.
2. Be careful how you interpret the world; it is like that.
– Erich Heller
3. Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.
– Epictetus
4. The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.
When you believe that your problem is caused by someone else, you are your own victim, and the situation appears to be hopeless.
The sky isn’t the limit: the mind that sees the sky is the limit.
Freedom isn’t a destination; it’s a state of mind.
Life is simple. It’s what we believe about life that complicates it.
Every time your mind shifts, your world shifts.
5. Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain which grows flowers, not thunder.
The garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.
Many of the faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them.
– Rumi
6. A bad attitude can literally block love, blessings, and destiny from finding you. Don’t be the reason you don’t succeed.
– Mandy Hale
7. I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children …
– Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness
8. Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.
The choice to have a great attitude is something nobody or no circumstance can take from you.
The more you complain about your problems, the more problems you will have to complain about.
– Zig Ziglar
9. If a man speaks or acts with pure thought, joy will follow him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.
Being rich is not about how much we have, but how much we give.
– Author Unknown
10. Our thoughts shape our perceptions. Our perceptions shape our reality.
We see the world through the mirror of our own being.
The world is as we are. Twitter
The picture of the world is not the look of it. It is our way of looking.
See today as the beginning of the future, not the tail end of the part.
11. You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
12. Don’t allow your wounds to transform you into someone you are not.
Straight roads do not make skillful drivers.
13. Sometimes the nicest people you meet are covered in tattoos and sometimes the most judgmental people you meet go to church on Sundays.
– Earl Dibbles Jr.
14. The way we think about people affects how we treat them.
Patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.
A grateful attitude makes you happy.
A positive attitude enables to you to make the best of every situation, and that gives you power over your circumstances instead of allowing your circumstances to have power over you.
We may not be able to change every circumstance in our life, but we can change our outlook.
15. Profound environmental protection begins with profoundly cultivating our inner environment.
Nothing is easy to the unwilling. No road is too long for those already on it.
16. Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
17. It you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.
– Elaine S. Dalton
18. Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
19. Communication is a skill that you can learn. It’s like riding a bicycle or typing. If you’re willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life.
– Brian Tracy
20. I have come to accept the bumpy roads of life; they seem to lead to the best places. (Twitter)
The successful person and the unsuccessful person are looking at the same world; the difference between them is what they see.
21. … when you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You appreciate it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying “You’re too this, or I’m too this.” That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed. (On Self Judgment)
As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can’t see how it is.
The world is a reflection of our internal state; if we dwell on turmoil, anger and confusion then that is how the world will be perceived to an individual. You have to work on yourself first before you can effectively take any social or political action. A quiet mind and and an open heart are important attributes to project into the world. (Spirituality and Politics)
What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution. (Twitter, 2 December 2017)
– Ram Dass
22. Life may not be fair, but if you’ll have the right attitude, instead of setbacks, everything will be a set up for something great in your life.
Wake up every morning with a thankful attitude. Expect something good to happen in your life today.
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
23. The World is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself.
– Helen Schucman, A Course in Miracles, with portions transcribed and edited by William Thetford
24. What you have carried in your mind about the world is what you will see around the world.
Drop the thought that you cannot affect the future. Tell yourself the future is not coming to you, it is coming through you.
25. A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
– David Brinkley
26. We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within.
Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.
Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.
27. Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A ‘you can do it’ when things are tough.
– Richard M. DeVos
28. In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.
The ultimate source of happiness is our mental attitude.
29. An attitude of gratitude brings great things.
– Yogi Bhajan
30. Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.
31. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
– Regina Brett, 45 Lessons Life Taught Me
32. Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.
No one else ‘makes us angry.’ We make ourselves angry when we surrender control of our attitude.
– Jim Rohn
33. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
34. Most everything that you want is just outside your comfort zone.
35. Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.
– Joseph Sugarman
36. I already know what giving up feels like. I want to see what happens if I don’t.
– Neila Rey
37. What really matters is what you do with what you have.
– H.G. Wells
38. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
39. Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.
40. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free.
– Stephen Hawking
41. But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.
42. Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.
43. It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.
44. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
45. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
#46 Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan
46. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
Carl Sagan
47. The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.
– John F. Kennedy, State of the Union Address January 11 1962
48. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
49. Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality – in your own mind.
50. The past can’t be changed but the future is ours to shape if we make the effort.
50. A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.
– Ken Keyes Jr.
51. Take the stones people throw at you and use them to build a monument.
A problem is only a problem when seen as a problem.
The respect you give others is a dramatic reflection of the respect you give yourself. (Twitter)
What makes a master a master is that they never think they’re masters. Always be growing. Always. (Twitter, 17 July 2017)
What makes masters is that they think like beginners. (Twitter, 25 September 2017)
– Robin Sharma
52. The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective.
– Al Neuharth
53. Life is not about avoiding pain. It is how you handle pain when it crosses your path.
We cannot please everyone, but the good news is that we do not exist to please everyone.
– Dodinsky
54. You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
– Jon Kabat-Zinn
55. The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.
– Dennis S. Brown
56. The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.
57. It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
– Dale Carnegie
58. The world is like a mirror; frown at it, and it frowns at you. Smile and it smiles, too.
– Herbert Samuels
59. Not what we experience, but how we perceive what we experience, determines our fate.
60. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
– Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
61. There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.
– Judith McNaught, Remember When
62. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
63. We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
64. The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.
– Martha Washington
65. The longer I live the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company . . . a church . . . a home. The remarkable thing is, we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. . . . we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. . . . we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you . . . we are in charge of our Attitudes.
– Charles Swindoll
66. Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
67. Stop judging people! The things that you judge wrong with them could be the very things you find unacceptable in yourself.
– Iyanla Vanzant
68. Your mind is the garden, your thoughts are the seeds, the harvest can either be flowers or weeds.
69. Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
– Satchel Paige
70. When you are positive, it rubs off on people and you help to create a more positive atmosphere.
71. The way in which you perceive the other is determined by your own thought forms.
Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is – no matter what form it takes – you are still, you are at peace.
Remember that your perception of the world is a reflection of your state of consciousness. You are not separate from it, and there is no objective world out there. Every moment, your consciousness creates the world that you inhabit.
72. If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.
73. The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?
Whatever point of view you have, there’s another.
Conscience understands that we are all in it together, and that when we harm another, we harm ourselves.
Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean.
Like a sandcastle, all is temporary. Build it, tend it, enjoy it. And when the time comes, let it go.
74. Different angles reveal different worlds. Perspective is a choice.
– Bronnie Ware
75. What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.
– Jean-Paul Sartre
76. You can return to harmony by embracing everything and everyone as it is.
– Panache Desai
77. You carry your attitude with you. You either achieve or you self-destruct. If you think positively, you can even turn a negative into a positive.
– Sister Madonna Buder, Iron Nun
#78 The Four Agreements [S]
78. Your anger, jealousy, and envy will disappear, and even your sadness will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally.
– Don Miguel Ruiz
79. Never judge someone by the way he looks or a book by the way it’s covered; for inside those tattered pages, there’s a lot to be discovered.
– Stephen Cosgrove
80. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
#81 Bell Telephone Talk, 1901
81. Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
– Alexander Graham Bell
82. Your attitude is either the lock on, or the key to the door of success.
83. Most people are afraid of suffering. But suffering is a kind of mud to help the lotus flower of happiness grow. There can be no lotus flower without the mud.
84. To different minds, the same world is a hell and a heaven.
85. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few. (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)
– Shunryu Suzuki
86. The best way to respond to irrational and unreasonable people is with silence.
– Anthony Gucciardi
87. Every experience is seen through your mind’s eye, so when you change your mind you change your entire world.
– Bryant McGill
88. Sometimes all it takes is a tiny shift of perspective to see something familiar in a totally new light. (The Lost Symbol)
– Dan Brown
89. Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
90. If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!
91. Speak not harshly to anyone, for those thus spoken to might retort. Indeed, angry speech hurts, and retaliation may overtake you. (Verse 133 of The Dhammapada)
– Buddha
92. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
93. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.
94. Train your mind to perform under pressure — shift your narrative.
95. Running away from your problems is a race you will never win. (Twitter, 27 May 2018)
– Bruce Van Horn
96. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with open mind.
97. As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
98. There is something magical about beginnings, about the challenges that come with territory not yet conquered, about being the underdog. I think I’d far rather stand at the beginning of something, looking up, rather than at a summit, looking down. (Jo Malone: My Story)
– Jo Malone
99. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
100. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV. (Bossypants)
– Tina Fey
101. Health is not just about what you’re eating. It’s also about what you’re thinking and saying.
– Author Unknown
102. We can’t control everything — but we can control how we respond. Direct your focus there. (Twitter, 4 February 2019)
– Marie Forleo
103. We can’t fix every problem — corruption, natural calamities are part of the picture here — but the ones we can we must. (Commencement Address at the University of Pennsylvania, 17 May 2004)
– Bono
#104 The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World
104. Humans are like mirrors: We reflect each other.
– Haemin Sunim
#105 Finish First: Winning Changes Everything, Scott Hamilton, Thomas Nelson, 6 February 2018
105. The only disability in life is a bad attitude.
– Scott Hamilton
#106 Instagram [S]
106. When you’re not scared of failing, it opens up a multitude of opportunities.
– Tanya Ramos
#107 Stanford Rathbun Lecture 2017
107. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out, reacting in anger or annoyance, will not advance one’s ability to persuade.
– Ruth Bader Ginsburg
108. Things turn out best for those who make best of how things turn out.
– John Wooden
#109 Twitter [S]
109. You don’t have to agree on everything to agree on something.
– Adam Grant
#110 How is Your Heart?
110. during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn’t call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occurring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
– Charles Bukowski
#111 Lonesome Traveler
111. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.
– Jack Kerouac
#112 Facebook [S]
112. There is no end to your potential. There is no end to your growth. You have so much to offer this world.
– Harpreet M Dayal
#113 The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in [S]
113. What we do see depends mainly on what we look for.
– Sir John Lubbock
#114 Positive Mental Attitudes, Excerpts from the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda [S]
114. Change your thoughts if you wish to change your circumstances. Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
– Paramahansa Yogananda
#115 May 7, The Ordinary Art, The Book of Awakening
115. Before fixing what you’re looking at, check what you’re looking through.
– Mark Nepo
#116 March 24, Even in the Dark, The Book of Awakening
116. To be broken is no reason
to see all things as broken.
– Mark Nepo
#117 Moby Dick: Or, The White Whale
117. …see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.
– Herman Melville
#118 Smile, Daylight Dialogues
118. Smile at everything that comes at you.
Smile at everything that comes.
Smile at everything.
Smile.
– Charissa Ong T.Y.
#119 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
119. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
– Stephen R. Covey
120. Twitter [S]
120. Of all the choices you make each day none is more important than the choice of a positive attitude.
– Steve Keating
121. We rise only by lifting others up along the way; not by putting them down.
It may not always be a good day, but we can always choose how we want to respond to it.
– Symphony of Love