Inspiring Quotes for Overcoming Addiction: A Collection of Hope

"Believe you can, and you’re halfway there."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."

- Robert Collier

"If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime."

- Benjamin Alire Sáenz

"Fall seven times, stand up eight."

- Japanese Proverb

"When you rise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love …"

- Marcus Aurelius

"It is 10 years since I used drugs or alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and, generally, a bright outlook… The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational."

- Russell Brand

"Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest."

- Robert Downey Jr.

"I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: ‘Wait a minute – if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?’ And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk."

- Craig Ferguson

"My recovery from drug addiction is the single greatest accomplishment of my life… but it takes work — hard, painful work — but the help is there, in every town and career, drug/drink freed members of society, from every single walk and talk of life to help and guide."

- Jamie Lee Curtis

"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

- Anne Frank

"People spend a lifetime searching for happiness, looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, and even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within."

- Ramona L. Anderson

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."

- Nelson Mandela

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

- Helen Keller

"You can come out of the furnace of trouble two ways: if you let it consume you, you come out a cinder; but there is a kind of metal which refuses to be consumed, and comes out a star."

- Jean Church

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny."

- C.S. Lewis

"Cause sometimes you just feel tired. Feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you. You gotta find that inner strength. And just pull it out of you, and get that motivation to not give up, and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face."

- Eminem

"Nothing is impossible; the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’"

- Audrey Hepburn

"Hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things, and good things never die."

- Stephen King

"Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right."

- Henry Ford

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing."

- Gary Oldman

"I’ve been sober for 18 years now. It wasn’t like you flick a switch, and you’re sober. It takes a while. You have to learn how to do everything all over again. There is life after addiction, and it’s really good. If I had known, I’d have stopped earlier."

- Joe Walsh

"I went to hell and back, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Then I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in, happy about life and comfortable in my skin."

- Drew Barrymore

"I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done."

- Robert Downey Jr.

"Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

- J.K. Rowling

"One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery."

- Demi Lovato

"My addiction does not define who I am or who I will be!"

- Lisa Renee Barnes Lampros

"I really mean when I say my biggest fear in early recovery was that I would never have fun again. The beautiful truth is that recovery has given me freedom and the confidence to go out in the world and leave my own mark."

- Tom Stoddart

"You must do the things you think you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"What is an addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood."

- Alice Miller

"The only journey is the one within."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit."

- Bernard Williams

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

- Henry Ford

"It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."

- Joseph Campbell

"All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for."

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

"It’s been a learning process, I’m growing. I couldn’t believe that anybody could be naturally happy without being on something. So I would say to anybody, ‘it does get better.’"

- Eminem

"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

- Albert Einstein

"Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself."

- Theodore T. Hunger

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear."

- Rosa Parks

"Amazing how we can light tomorrow with today."

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Once I was clear-headed, and I hadn’t been clear-headed in so long, I was like, I can never go back. And I’m still thankful."

- Travis Barker

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."

- Carl Bard

"When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way."

- Dalai Lama

"Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell."

- Carrie Fisher

"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 that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

- Marie Curie

"I realized that I only had two choices: I was either going to die or I was going to live, and which one did I want to do? And then I said those words, ‘I’ll get help,’ or, ‘I need help. I’ll get help.’ And my life turned around. Ridiculous for a human being to take 16 years to say, ‘I need help.’"

- Elton John

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving."

- Albert Einstein

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back."

- Albert Camus

"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily."

- Zig Ziglar

"Don’t let the past steal your present."

- Terri Guillemets

"I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."

- Georgia O'Keeffe

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one."

- Elbert Hubbard

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any."

- Alice Walker

"We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely … change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now."

- George Sheehan

"Every day is a new day. No need to dwell on the past. Look straight ahead."

- Saint Charlotte

"Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again."

- Shane Niemeyer

"Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once."

- Paulo Coelho

"I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination."

- Jimmy Dean

"Addiction begins with the hope that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside."

- Jean Kilbourne

"Every experience in your life is being orchestrated to teach you something you need to know to move forward."

- Brian Tracy

"Every noble work is at first impossible."

- Thomas Carlyle

"The best way out is always through."

- Robert Frost

"As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move."

- Katharine Hepburn

"I’ve wanted to feel pleasure to the point of insanity. They call it ‘getting high,’ because it’s wanting to know that higher level, that godlike level. You want to touch the heavens, you want to feel glory and euphoria, but the trick is it takes work."

- Anthony Kiedis

"Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial."

- David Stafford

"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

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’"

- Muhammad Ali

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower."

- Shigenori Kameoka

"And that’s what it’s like for me in recovery at times. Afraid to take on responsibility, new sponsees or something, or allowing myself to stand up and shine… I’ve got new tools, I’ve got new hope, new love, new respect for myself."

- James Hetfield

"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

- Babe Ruth

"A lot of people think that addiction is a choice. A lot of people think it’s a matter of will. That has not been my experience. I don’t find it to have anything to do with strength."

- Matthew Perry

"I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger."

- Samuel L. Jackson

"Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow."

- Larry Michael Dredla

"If it wasn’t for that rehab center, I probably wouldn’t have been here. In terms of recovery, it has been very important for me to be a part of a recovery community, to actively be around my people because they understand me. They get it."

- Macklemore

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you."

- Charlotte Whitton

"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."

- Dr. Seuss

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you."

- Aldous Huxley

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself."

- Hecato

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

- Oscar Wilde

"If things go wrong, don’t go with them."

- Roger Babson

"The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand as what direction you are moving."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"I dwell in possibility."

- Emily Dickinson

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life; it comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives, and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday."

- John Wayne

"Either you run the day, or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Change your behaviours and your feelings will follow."

- Susan McManhon

"If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome."

- Michael Jordan

"I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward."

- Charlotte Brontë

"We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely change is due to wanting power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now."

- George Sheehan

"I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake, and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger."

- Samuel L. Jackson

"People are not addicted to alcohol or drugs, they are addicted to escaping reality."

- Anonymous

"You are not weak for struggling. You are strong for continuing to fight."

- Anonymous

"Be addicted to improving yourself."

- Anonymous

"Recovery isn’t always easy, but it certainly beats the alternative."

- Anonymous

"I used drugs to feel better. I quit drugs to be better."

- Anonymous

"Someone once told me, ‘I heard you finally got rid of your addiction.’ I smiled and said, ‘No, addiction doesn’t work like that. Once you have it, you will always have it. I just choose not to feed it.'"

- Anonymous

"Addiction makes you blind to your reality."

- Anonymous

"Before you can break out of prison, you must realise you are locked up."

- Anonymous

"Loving an addicted child is like grieving his death and fighting for his life at the same time. All while hated, helpless, and alone."

- Anonymous

"First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes a man."

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."

"Patience and the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown."

"Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it."

"Adapt the remedy to the disease."

"Control your emotions or they will control you."

"A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it."

"With true friends…even water drunk together is sweet enough."

"Either do not begin or, having begun, do not give up."

"If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody."

"It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy."

"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward."