Quotes to Boost Your Self Confidence
I was recently researching the emotion of curiosity. I was exploring how to increase sales representatives’ curiosity about their customers. My findings were interesting.
I learned that one of the biggest factors affecting someone’s willingness to ask a customer a question was their self-confidence. Often we don’t want to ask questions because we don’t want our customers to ask us a question we didn’t anticipate or that we can’t answer. We’re also afraid of asking a question that makes us appear to lack knowledge about a topic.
Since the time of antiquity, leaders have shared their wisdom about the role of self-confidence in our lives and how we can develop and nurture self-confidence.
Below you’ll see quotes from antiquity, from the first and second century BCE, and from the 19th and 20th centuries.
As you review these self-confidence quotes, consider how you can amplify this wisdom across your life and your various leadership roles.
Enjoy!
“If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.” – Cicero
“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” – Mark Twain
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” – Aristotle
“It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.” – Epicurus
“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” – Lao Tzu
“Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself. .” – Cicero
”The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you.” – William Jennings Bryan
“Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.” – Thomas Carlyle
“The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.” – Seneca
“With the realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama
“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain
“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” – Confucius
“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These are your greatest treasures. ” – Lao Tzu
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” – Aristotle
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” – Seneca
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” – Marcus Aurelius
Thanks for reviewing these quotes to help build self-confidence. Which resonated most with you. For me, it was the last quote by Marcus Aurelius. Food for thought…
Make it a great day!
