Quotes About Goals: For Fitness, Friendship, Business, & More

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
When we feel like giving up, sometimes all we need is a little inspiration. Keep reading for motivational quotes about goals for fitness, business, and more. 
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We all want the most out of our lives. It’s unlikely anyone would suggest that they’re perfectly content with the bare minimum and aren’t at all interested in reaching their full potential. Setting goals is a necessary step in living our very best life. Unfortunately, setting, keeping, and reaching our goals is not as simple as it may sound. It can be challenging to know where to start and how to stay motivated in the face of obstacles or when progress is slow. 
Having a selection of inspiring quotes about goals to turn to and reflect on is a great way to give us a boost when we are struggling. Here is a collection of some of the best quotes about setting, maintaining, and actualizing our goals.  ​

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Short Quotes About Goals

  • ​“If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.” ― Seneca the Younger
  • “Great goals make great people. People cannot hit what they do not aim for.” ― Roy T. Bennett
  • “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.” — Fitzhugh Dodson
  • “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” ― Karen Lamb
  • “Begin with the end in mind.” — Stephen Covey
  • “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” — Earl Nightingale
  • “One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.” — Jack Penn
  • “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden

Funny Quotes About Goals

  • “If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.” ― Yogi Berra
  • “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean
  • “If you want to reach your goals, you must shrink the size of your but.” – Unknown
  • “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” – Diana Scharf
  • “Winners are losers who go up and gave it one more try.” – Dennis DeYoung

Famous Quotes About Goals

  • “Aim for the moon. If you miss you may hit a star.” – W. Clement Stone
  • “You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will.” — Stephen King
  • "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any." — Alice Walker
  • “You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.” — Wayne Gretzky
  • “If you can dream it, you can do it.” — Walt Disney
  • “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” — Confucius
  • “You just can't beat the person who never gives up.” — Babe Ruth

Quotes About Fitness Goals

  • “People are not lazy, they simply have impotent goals..that is..goals that do not inspire them.”― Anthony Robbins
  • “Your complaints, your drama, your victim mentality, your whining, your blaming, and all of your excuses have NEVER gotten you even a single step closer to your goals or dreams. Let go of your nonsense. Let go of the delusion that you DESERVE better and go EARN it! Today is a new day!”― Steve Maraboli
  • “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” — Norman Vincent Peale
  • "If there is no struggle, there is no progress." — Frederick Douglass
  • “Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.” — George Whitefield
  • “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” — Jim Rohn
  • “The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides a champion from someone who is not a champion.”- Arnold Schwarzenegger

Quotes About Friendship Goals

  • “True friends… face in the same direction, toward common projects, interests, and goals.” – C.S. Lewis
  • "I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff." – Jon Katz
  • "Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." – Oscar Wilde
  • “Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend." – Albert Camus
  • "Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over." – Octavia Butler
  • "Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time, it can purify with your love, and falsity and need will fall away. It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again." – John O'Donohue

Quotes About Goal Setting

  • “If you're bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things, you don't have enough goals.”― Lou Holtz
  • “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”― Michelangelo Buonarroti
  • “Goals are the road maps that guide you to your destination. Cultivate the habit of setting clearly-defined written goals; they are the road maps that guide you to your destination.” ― Roy T. Bennett
  • “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” — Andrew Carnegie
  • “Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.” — Elbert Hubbard
  • “By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.” — Mark Victor Hansen

Quotes Goals and Dreams

  • “It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming.” ― Laini Taylor
  • “Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.” ― Louisa May Alcott
  • “Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.” ― Rabindranath Tagore
  • “To dream of success is to set a goal of where you want to be; to wake up, take action, and achieve it is what true success is all about.” ― Idowu Koyenikan
  •  “A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.” — Bo Bennett
  • “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

Quotes About Life Goals

  • “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
  • “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” ― Albert Einstein
  • “Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.” ― Marcus Aurelius
  • “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 must be attained.” – Marie Curie
  • “The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” — Bill Copeland
  • “If you don't make the time to work on creating the life that you want, you're going to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don't want.” — Kevin Ngo
  • “Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.” — Elbert Hubbard

Quotes About Business Goals

  • “Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal. Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.” — Mario Andretti
  • “When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.” ― Napoleon Hill
  • “I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there, you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.” — Zig Ziglar
  • “The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.” — Thomas Henry Huxley
  • “You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.” — Edmund Hillary
  • “You need to have unbound enthusiasm for what you’re building. Energy is contagious, so your team and everyone you interact with feels it.” — Tyler Haney

Quotes About Big Goals

  • “Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.”― Theodore Roosevelt
  • “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” – Henry David Thoreau
  • “Become the leader of your life. Lead yourself to where you want to be. Breathe life back into your ambitions, your desires, your goals, your relationships.” ― Steve Maraboli 
  • “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Elanor Roosevelt
  • “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “You need lofty goals. Then cement it with a great work ethic.” — Jerry West
  • “Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.” — Pauline Kael​

Quotes About Goals for Students

  • “Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.” ― Paulo Coelho
  • “What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.” ― Norman Vincent Peale
  • “Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” – Napoleon Hill
  • “There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.” – Michael Phelps
  • “The strong-minded rise to the challenge of their goals and dreams. The weak-minded become haters.” ― Steve Maraboli,
  • “Focused, hard work is the real key to success. Keep your eyes on the goal, and just keep taking the next step towards completing it. If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better.” — John Carmack
  • “We do not develop anything with one giant step. No matter who you are, or what you do, each one of us had had to take a lot of individual steps to accomplish a task, a job, a career, or even a hobby.” — Catherine Pulsifer

Quotes About Goals for Kids

  • “Dear me, one day I'll make you proud.” ― Charlotte Eriksson
  • “You can’t hit a home run unless you step up to the plate. You can’t catch a fish unless you put your line in the water. You can’t reach your goals if you don’t try.” – Kathy Seligman
  • “Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
  • “One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.” — Karen Casey
  • “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
  • “Obstacles are those frightful things that we see when we take our eyes off our goal.” – Henry Ford

Quotes About Meeting Goals

  • ​“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” ― Bruce Lee
  • “To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles.” ― T.F. Hodge
  • “People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going.” – Earl Nightingale
  • “It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.”― Arnold Joseph Toynbee
  • “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” — Stephen A. Brennan

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Final Thoughts on Quotes About Goals

Regardless of what your goals are—whether it’s improving your physical health and relationships, starting a business, or getting your degree—you’ll almost certainly experience obstacles, failures, and dwindling resolve. Setbacks are a natural and largely unavoidable part of striving to achieve our dreams. Whenever we find ourselves struggling, we can always return to our favorite motivational quotes to remind us that we are capable of greatness.

For more quotes about Goals, check out this video:

Video: 20 Quotes on Achieving Your Big Goals in Life

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