13 Extraordinary Quotes About Purpose to Start Your Day
The burden to change the status quo is heavy. Here are some inspiring words to help battle compassion fatigue and purpose burnout.
A global pandemic, a record amount of people unemployed, a momentous Civil Rights Movement — we’re truly living in a historic era right now, one that demands tremendous amounts of humility, self-reflection, empathy, education, and perspective. To address these social issues and right the wrongs of centuries’ worth of systemic oppression also requires effort, courage, resilience — and most of all, a deep sense of purpose.
Perhaps your purpose in life and business has lain dormant for months, years, or decades and this turbulent time has caused you to turn up the volume on your passionate beliefs on how the world could and should be better. Or maybe your purpose is outdated and recent events have lit a new fire within you, directing you toward a completely new-to-you worthy cause.
Whatever the case, the emotional atmosphere is thick and the burden to change the status quo is heavy. Realizing and acting on your purpose can cause exhaustion and burnout, which means you might need a little inspiration to lighten the load. Here are 13 extraordinary quotes about purpose to start — and get you through — your day.
“Loneliness is not an absence of people. It’s an absence of purpose.”
– Sam Horn“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
– Viktor Frankl“It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.”
– Winston S. Churchill“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.”
– W. Clement Stone“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.”
– Michel de Montaigne“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”
– John F. Kennedy“True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
– Helen Keller“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
– Rumi“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run — in the long-run, I say! — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
– Viktor Frankl“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
– Les Brown“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
– Picasso“When you walk in purpose, you collide with destiny.”
– Ralph BuchananGet Your (Free!) 3-Step Plan to Bring More Purpose to Your Life This Week!