90 Thought Provoking Quotes To Think Deep About Life

Looking for some inspirational words that are thought-provoking? We have rounded some of the best thought provoking quotes, sayings, and proverbs (with images and pictures) about love, life, and success to give you the right perspective on life.

These classic quotes are written by the world’s most famous philosophers, leaders, writers, actors, and more. which will stir some deep thoughts.

Also See: Philosophical Quotes On Life

Deep philosophical quotes can change your point of view in life when you are depressed and need real motivation.

We can get inspired by the wise words about life of some of the greatest philosophers in history such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Charles Bukowski, and others.

Also see: Life Changing Quotes

These meaningful quotes will make you think about the reality of life. A lot of these sayings are wise, clever, funny, witty, and will be relatable to you.

Top 10 Thought-Provoking Quotes 

  1. “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” – Gabriel García Márquez

  2. “To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.” – Robert Morley

  3. “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” – Albert Einstein

  4. “The oldest, shortest words – ‘yes’ and ‘no’ – are those which require the most thought.” – Pythagoras

  5. “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” – Martin Heidegger

  6. “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie

  7. “It is necessary… for a man to go away by himself… to sit on a rock… and ask, ‘Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?’” – Carl Sandburg

  8. “The purpose of life is not to be happy – but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.” – Leo Rosten

  9. “Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” – Hunter S. Thompson

  10. “Problems come about when we try to direct the flow of the universe rather than allow it to reveal its own design. Inherent in that design is a love for all living things.” – Marianne Williamson

Famous Quotes That Are Thought Provoking

  1. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

  2. “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” – Albert Einstein

  3. “One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” – Rita Mae Brown                                                           
    thought provoking quotes
    thought provoking quotes

  4. “People will always show their true selves in the end.” – Leona Lewis

  5. “The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.” – Albert Schweitzer                                     
    thought provoking quotes images
    thought provoking quotes images

  6. “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” – Ernest Hemingway                                     
    Deep thought provoking quotes
    Deep thought provoking quotes

  7. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

  8. “You have to die a few times before you can really live.” – Charles Bukowski                                                               
    thought provoking charles bukowski quotes
    thought provoking charles bukowski quotes

  9. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Soren Kierkegaard

  10. “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” – William James

  11. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

  12. “People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.” – Anton Chekhov

  13. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard                                                                                                                                                         
    best thought provoking quotes
    best thought provoking quotes

  14. “A river cuts through rocks, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.” – Unknown

  15. “What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it is supposed to be.” – Unknown

  16. “Confidence is like a dragon where, for every head cut off, two more heads grow back.” – Criss Jami

  17. “If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.” – Charles Bukowski

  18. “Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.” – St Augustine

  19. “When the winds of life are pushing you back, that’s when you push forward the hardest.” – Yvonne Pierre

  20. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – Albert Einstein

  21. “Happiness is not some ‘thing’ to be pursued, it is a way of being born from appreciating.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru

  22. “Every morning you have two choices: Continue to sleep with your dreams, or wake up and chase them.” – Unknown

  23. “If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.” – Roy T. Bennett

  24. “There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves.” – Paulo Coelho

  25. “The most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” – Unknown

  26. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” – Albert Camus

  27. “People are strange: They are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice.” – Charles Bukowski

  28. “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is that things are being loved and people are being used.” – Unknown

  29. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Gautam Buddha

Deep Thought-Provoking Quotes 

Words are powerful. They can create and destroy. The words we write or speak can have a huge impact on others be it good or bad.

So some insightful quotes and thought in the morning can give you the much needed motivation to keep pushing your limits and be on your way to success.

  1. “A wrong motive involves defeat.” – Mary Baker Eddy

  2. “If you change nothing, nothing will change.” – Unknown

  3. “Few minds wear out; more rust out.” – Christian N. Bovee

  4. “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” – Anais Nin                                               
    top thought provoking quotes
    top thought provoking quotes

  5. “The thing we take for granted someone else is praying for.” – Unknown

  6. “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” – Thomas Szasz                                                     
    thought provoking quotes about life
    thought provoking quotes about life

  7. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” – Kahlil Gibran

  8. “An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.” – Jef Mallett

  9. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar

  10. “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.” – Oscar Wilde

  11. “The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.” – Jim Rohn
    Motivational Thought Provoking Quotes
    Motivational Thought Provoking Quotes

  12. “What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” – Albert Einstein

  13. “Sorrow is one of the vibrations that prove the fact of living.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  14. “Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

  15. “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy

  16. “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” – William Mather Lewis

  17. “Sorrows cannot all be explained away in a life truly lived, grief and loss accumulate like possessions.” – Stefan Kanfer

  18. “Not all scars fade, some are supposed to stay to remind us that real beauty lies in surviving them.” – D.G. Torrens

  19. “Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.” – Yip Harburg

  20. “I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; Yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul.” – Og Mandino

  21. “As long as the ego runs your life, there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want. Getting what you want.” – Eckhart Tolle

  22. “Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.” – Washington Irving

  23. “A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  24. “You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.” – Old Chinese Proverb

  25. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russel

  26. “Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am – and what I need – is something I have to find out myself.” – Chinua Achebe

  27. “There are 3 types of people in this world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.” – Unknown

Philosophical Quotes That Will Make You Think

  1. “Reality is such an elusive concept.” – Laura Gilfillan

  2. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R. R. Tolkein                                                                           
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    thought provoking quotes inspirational

  3. “There is no substitute for hard work.” – Thomas Edison

  4. “Well done is better than well said.” – Benjamin Franklin

  5. “Misery is almost always the result of thinking.” – Joseph Joubert                                                           
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    thought provoking sayings

  6. “Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking.” – J.C. Watts

  7. “A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain

  8. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain                                             
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    thought provoking quotes wallpaper

  9. “The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain                                             
    thought provoking quotes to make you think
    thought provoking quotes to make you think

  10. “Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.” – Sun Tzu

  11. “Give us everything we ask for and suddenly it’s too much.” – Mark Lawrence

  12. “A wise man will be master of his mind. A fool will be its slave.” – Publilius Syrus

  13. “The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.” – Mark Twain

  14. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy

  15. “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” – Lewis B. Smedes

  16. “Sometimes we choose the road we follow. And sometimes the road chooses us.” – Richie Singh

  17. “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.” – Mahatma Gandhi

  18. “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” – Plato

  19. “Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

  20. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you something. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain

  21. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” – Norman Cousins

  22. “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” – Oscar Wilde

  23. “The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time.” – Francis Chan

  24. “People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they are not on your road, doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.” – Dalai Lama

  25. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw

Thought-Provoking Quotes to Get You Motivated

  1. “Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” – Henry Ford

  2. “If you don’t like how things are, change it. You are not a tree.” – Jim Rohn

  3. “Don’t use yesterday’s state of mind, to make today’s decision.” – C. Nzingha Smith

  4. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling

  5. “The distance is nothing; it’s only the first step that is difficult.” – Marquise du Deffand

  6. “Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” – Jim Rohn

  7. “A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” – Albert Einstein

  8. “Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

  9. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

  10. “He that is good for making excuses, is seldom good for anything else.” – Benjamin Franklin

  11. “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.” – Winston Churchill
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    thought provoking quotes pictures

  12. “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life’.” – Helen Exley

  13. “Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.” – Alexis Carrel

  14. “I have had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.” – Jonas Salk

  15. “Your mind can be either your prison or your palace. What you make it is yours to decide.” – Bernard Kelvin Clive

  16. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t succeed in something. What matters is if I learn from my mistakes.” – Linda Evans

  17. “And what greater might do we possess as human beings than our capacity to question and to learn?” – Ann Druyan

  18. “If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” – Maya Angelou

  19. “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

  20. “You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.” – Robin Williams

  21. “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” – William Arthur Ward

  22. “There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.” – Chanakya

  23. “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane, and the pessimist the parachute.” – Gil Stein

  24. “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

  25. “If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words, we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths.” – Betty Eadie

 

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Read on to find these encouraging words of wisdom about sad but true sayings that will motivate you to keep hustling in building your business, leading your life, creating success, achieving your goals as a student, and overcoming your fears to do anything you set your mind to.

Don’t forget to check out feeling like a burden and when things fall apart quotes if you are heartbroken.

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