Top 32 Famous Quotes About Resilience
Looking for resilience inspiration? Refer to these historical gems.
This post is part of the Reality Studies Resilience Manual, which includes explainers like this one:
Psychological Resilience and the Benefits of Resilience Counseling
Given *gestures at everything*, few topics feel quite as relevant as resilience. This spring, I’m building out what I’m internally referring to as the “Reality Studies Resilience Manual,” a series of explainers and analysis that hopefully helps readers understand the basics and why it matters in 2025 and beyond.
In conducting research on resilience, I’ve come across historical quotes that educate and motivate, so I’ve compiled some of those for your reading pleasure.
“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” —Coretta Scott King
“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” —Maya Angelou
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” —paraphrased from Charles Darwin
“Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” —Angela Duckworth
“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” —Robert Jordan
“Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” —Nelson Mandela
“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” —Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.” —Dalai Lama XIV
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” —Thomas Edison
“Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient.” —Steve Maraboli
“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” ―Mizuta Masahide (17th century Japanese poet and samurai)
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” —misattributed to Confucius
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” —Elizabeth Edwards
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” —Bob Marley
“The best way out is always through." —Robert Frost
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” —Henry Stanley Haskins (often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)
“Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms.” —Jean Chatzky
“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” —Christopher Reeve
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” —Oprah Winfrey
“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 have 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
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” —Epictetus
“Fall seven times, stand up eight.” (Nana korobi ya oki) —Japanese Proverb
“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.” —Marie Curie
“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” —paraphrase of Albert Einstein by John Archibald Wheeler
“Tough times never last, but tough people do.” —Robert H. Schuller
"Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift." —Mary Oliver
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” —Nelson Mandela
“What doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.” —Friedrich Nietzsche
"Grief and resilience live together." – Michelle Obama, Becoming
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” —Khalil Gibran
“No matter how you define success, you will need to be resilient, empowered, authentic, and limber to get there.” —Joanie Connell
"We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward." —Isabel Allende