We offer the following quotations as potential sources of inspiration and food-for-thought. If you have a quote on some aspect of resilience that you would like to share with others, please let us know via our Contact Us form.
- Turning Misfortunes
There are few misfortunes in the world that you cannot turn into a personal triumph if you have the iron will and the necessary skill.
—Nelson Mandela - Making Time
I spent my young adult years postponing many of the small things that I knew would make me happy … I was fortunate enough to realize that I would never have the time unless I made the time. And then the rest of my life began.
—Christopher Peterson, Positive Psychologist - Flexible Strength
The bamboo that bends in stronger than the oak that resists.
—Japanese Proverb - Forests & Families
Forests are just like human families.
—Suzanne Simard, The Networked Beauty of Forests (TEDEd, 11/2013) - Rain Dance
Life is not about waiting for the rain to stop. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
—Deborah Fishman, Life is in the Transitions - Rightly Ordered Soul
If the soul is rightly ordered, it can handle anything.
—Bishop Robert Barron, How to Lose Your Soul (And How to Save It) - Resilience Skills
Resilience isn’t a single skill. It’s a variety of skills and coping mechanisms. To bounce back from bumps in the road as well as failures, you should focus on emphasizing the positive.
—Jean Chatzky - What’s possible
Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.
—Saint Francis of Assisi - The Heart is your Center …
The heart is your center. It’s as central to your soul as your nose is to your face. Yet even though “it’s as plain as the nose on your face” this most obvious thing is often the easiest to ignore.
—Peter Kreeft - Dare to fail …
Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
—Robert F. Kennedy - Joy in the Spirit of Creating
In a lot of ways, art is a demonstration of resilience. Art in the spirit of making, in the spirit of creating — it’s like the closest thing to joy. They always say laughter is the best medicine. Well, so is joy.
—Nehemiah Dixon III, Phillips Collection - What Matters
What lies behind us and what lies before us is nothing compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - Art of Living x ½
A good half of the art of living is resilience.
—Alain de Boston - Survival
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin - The Challenge of a New Reality
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.
—Elizabeth Edwards - Inventing hope …
Hope is invented every day.
—James Baldwin - Resilient Teams
Resilient teams are just as important to businesses as resilient individuals, but while individual resilience is built independently, team resiliency must be carefully cultivated by leadership.
–Harvard Business Review (July 2019) - Resilience, Humanity, and Strength
To be rendered powerless does not destroy your humanity. Your resilience is your humanity. The only people who lose their humanity are those who believe they have the right to render another human being powerless. They are the weak. To yield and not break, that is incredible strength.
—Hannah Gadsby - Leadership Attributes
Leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep moving.
—Jesse Jackson - Never Be Hopeless
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.
—Albert Einstein
