50 Inspirational Quotes to Overcome Negativity and Embrace Positivity

"You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind."

- Joyce Meyer

"Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results."

- Willie Nelson

"There are always choices there for you. In other words, you can look at the hole in the wall or you can look at the beautiful painting. You can look at the lightbulb that is out, or you can see the lightbulb that is working. You can look at your mate in his positive aspect or you can look at your mate in his negative aspect. You can look at your own body and find something that pleases you or find something that doesn’t. You can remember your childhood and find something of pleasure or you can find something that makes you feel discouraged. You can remember a compliment or you can remember somebody down on you. You can remember your love or you can remember your hate. In other words, you have that choice in every moment."

- Abraham Hicks

"Whenever you should doubt your self-worth, remember the lotus flower. Even though it plunges to life from beneath the mud, it does not allow the dirt that surrounds it to affect its growth or beauty. Be that lotus flower always. Do not allow any negativity or ugliness in your surroundings destroy your confidence, affect your growth, or make you question your self-worth."

- Suzy Kassem

"Try giving up all the thoughts that make you feel bad, or even just some of them, and see how doing that changes your life. You don't need negative thoughts. All they have ever given you was a false self that suffers. They are all lies."

- Gina Lake

"Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation."

- Michael Jordan

"The key to happiness – or that even more desired thing, calmness – lies not in always thinking happy thoughts. No. That is impossible. No mind on earth with any kind of intelligence could spend a lifetime enjoying only happy thoughts. They key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept thoughts, but don’t become them. Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person."

- Matt Haig

"Everything can be taken from a man but…the last of the human freedoms– to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances."

- Viktor Frankl

"Don't focus on negative things; focus on the positive, and you will flourish."

- Alek Wek

"There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative."

- W. Clement Stone

"To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

- Eckhart Tolle

"The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention."

- Sharon Salzberg

"If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought."

- Peace Pilgrim

"Stop saying these negative things about yourself. Look in the mirror and find something about yourself that's positive and celebrate that!"

- Tyra Banks

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind."

- William James

"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

"It’s only a thought and a thought can be changed."

- Louise Hay

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness."

- Eckhart Tolle

"Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally."

- Kamand Kojouri

"Remembering what you've been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you're feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success."

- David Goggins

"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."

- Carl G. Jung

"Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results."

- Willie Nelson

"One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am."

- Michelle Obama

"It takes a lot of energy to be negative. You have to work at it. But smiling is painless. I'd rather spend my energy smiling."

- Eric Davis

"I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative."

- James Baldwin

"People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?"

- Thich Nhat Hanh

"I think it's important to get your surroundings as well as yourself into a positive state - meaning surround yourself with positive people, not the kind who are negative and jealous of everything you do."

- Heidi Klum

"A lot of times people look at the negative side of what they feel they can't do. I always look on the positive side of what I can do."

- Chuck Norris

"You have to look to the future with optimism instead of negative ideas. Take the good and the bad and face it head on."

- Goldie Hawn

"I don't have time to think about bad things, I'm always looking forward. Focusing on the positive, not the negative."

- Jameis Winston

"No matter what you do, people are always going to have something negative to say about it. You could spend your life constantly trying to seek people's approval and validation, but there is always going to be someone that has something negative to say about what you're doing."

- Tana Mongeau

"I've learned to ignore the negative people and just be a living example of confidence and self-love."

- Khoudia Diop

"Delete the negative; accentuate the positive!"

- Donna Karan

"Whether you think you can or you think you can’t either way you are right!"

- Henry Ford

"The only place where your dream becomes impossible is in your own thinking."

- Robert H. Schuller

"People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action."

- Steve Maraboli

"Relationships with negative people are simply tedious encounters with porcupines. You don’t have the remote knowledge how to be close to them without quills being shot in your direction."

- Shannon L. Alder

"It would be easy to become a victim of our circumstances and continue feeling sad, scared or angry; or instead, we could choose to deal with injustice humanely and break the chains of negative thoughts and energies, and not let ourselves sink into it."

- Erin Gruwell

"Negative people can only infest you with discouragements when they find you around... Just get lost and get saved!"

- Israelmore Ayivor

"It is better to dwell on the beautiful things in life than the negative."

- Lailah Gifty Akita

"There is too much negativity in the world. Do your best to make sure you aren't contributing to it."

- Germany Kent

"Positive anything is better than negative nothing."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Adopting the right attitude can convert a negative stress into a positive one."

- Hans Selye

"The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves."

- Pema Chödrön

"Don't ever let someone tell you the value you don't have, in order to be in someone's life. That is often the value they feel you have, not that person."

- Shannon L. Alder

"Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out."

- Joseph Campbell

"7 things negative people will do to you. They will... 1. Demean your value; 2. Destroy your image 3. Drive you crazily! 4. Dispose your dreams! 5. Discredit your imagination! 6. Deframe your abilities and 7. Disbelieve your opinions! Stay away from negative people!"

- Israelmore Ayivor

"No matter how valuable you are and your ideas, fools will certainly play both of you down, so exclude yourselves from the inflammatory environs of fools."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"The crazy creatives are the creatives who never go completely mad. They aren't so easily disheartened by the seemingly endless amounts of scrutiny that creative individuals tend to receive because they, like insanity, are the ones who feed off of opposition and negative feedback and manage to continue along with a healthy ambition. It is the crazy that teaches us to use our gifts wisely and own all the attackers."

- Criss Jami

"Be content with what you have. Rejoice in how things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking the whole world belongs to you."

- Lao Tzu

"Life can show up no other way than the way in which you perceive it."

- Neale Donald Walsch

"Those who pray for your downfall are concentrating negative thoughts towards you, without taking cognisance of the slippery ground in which they are standing, which could lead to their downfall."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"Even if I'm talking about something that's negative, I look at it as putting my mistakes out there for people to learn from it."

- Juice Wrld

"Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they're big, flashing signs that something needs to change."

- Gretchen Rubin

"My faith helps me overcome such negative emotions and find my equilibrium."

- Dalai Lama

"I don't support violence and I don't support negative energy. I don't support people putting other people down."

- Lil B

"Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people's buttons."

- Travis Bradberry

"Imperfection and perfection go so hand in hand, and our dark and our light are so intertwined, that by trying to push the darkness or the so-called negative aspects of our life to the side... we are preventing ourselves from the fullness of life."

- Jeff Bridges

"When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response."

- Indra Nooyi

"Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind."

- Matthieu Ricard

"You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it."

- Norman Schwarzkopf

"It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed."

- Ram Dass

"So there was a fire inside me. And that fire inside you, it can be turned into a negative form or a positive form. And I gradually realised that I had this fire and that it had to be used in a positive way."

- John Newcombe

"Haters never win. I just think that's true about life, because negative energy always costs in the end."

- Tom Hiddleston

"Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use."

- Sai Baba

"A complainer is like a Death Eater because there's a suction of negative energy. You can catch a great attitude from great people."

- Barbara Corcoran

"It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it."

- Sylvia Plath

"Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you’re thinking about it."

- Daniel Kahneman

"We try so hard to block out negative or dark thoughts, but sometimes embracing your demons is the most vitalizing thing you can do."

- Oliver Sykes

"Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative."

- T. S. Eliot

"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts."

- Steve Jobs

"When there's so many haters and negative things, I really don't care."

- Kim Kardashian

"I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it's like a battery: you've got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person."

- Dolly Parton

"Buy a gift for a dog, and you'll be amazed at the way it will dance and swerve its tail, but if don't have anything to offer to it, it won't even recognize your arrival; such are the attributes of fake friends."

- Michael Bassey Johnson

"Tell me, why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?"

- A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

"Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s. Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation. And that is a vision of America that most of the people in this country cannot and will not abide."

- Charles M. Blow

"It is ironic that constructive thinkers are often misunderstood as negative, as they differ from those longing for positivity: constructive thinkers have been conditioned to find positive in negative rather than suffering from the negative in negative. Or as Paul the Apostle wrote, 'I have learned the secret to contentment in any and every circumstance.' He was right. Indeed the Lord is our strength, especially under the commandment to love one another. Otherwise we are nothing and easily thrown about by both our own and other people's mind control in a painful, mental, physical desperation to run from every thought, every thing, and every one not seeming so positive or immediately beneficial to us."

- Criss Jami

"You can perhaps, in a number of circumstances, tell yourself that you can't have more than you have until you do better than you're doing, but by all means steer clear of its reverse, the creed of defeat, in saying that you can't do better than you're doing until you can have more than you have."

- Criss Jami

"Do not come into agreement with fear. Activate your faith, live in victory, speak over your life and expect great things to come your way."

- Germany Kent

"The negative side of the American Dream comes when people pursue success at any cost, which in turn destroys the vision and the dream."

- Azar Nafisi

"Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects."

- Pope Francis

"The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture."

- Peter L. Berger

"He who searches for evil, must first look at his own reflection."

- Confucious

"Negative and pessimistic views of technology have always existed. I can just imagine some pessimistic Sumerian in 3500 B.C. screaming about the evils of the wheel."

- Gray Scott

"A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy."

- Jean Baudrillard

"I would suggest that teachers show their students concrete examples of the negative effects of the actions that gangsta rappers glorify."

- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

"A stereotype may be negative or positive, but even positive stereotypes present two problems: They are cliches, and they present a human being as far more simple and uniform than any human being actually is."

- Nancy Kress

"Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima."

- Pablo Picasso

"Seeing the glass as half empty is more positive than seeing it as half full. Through such a lens the only choice is to pour more. That is righteous pessimism."

- Criss Jami

"When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them."

- Karen E. Quinones Miller

"I usually know almost exactly how I feel. The problem is, I just can't tell anyone."

- Meg Cabot

"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."