Quotes on Never Giving Up: On Yourself, Love, & More

By Nathalie Boutros, Ph.D.
Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

What does it mean to never give up? Read over 40 quotes to inspire you to never give up on yourself, your dreams, your family, love, or anything else.

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Success can mean different things to different people. One person may want to create beautiful art. Another may want to advance scientific knowledge. A third person may want to push physical limits. Yet another person may want to achieve financial success. All these goals require different skill sets: the artist may need to know how to paint, the scientist may need to know how to pipet, the athlete how to run, and the businessperson how to drive sales.

However, there’s one thing that most successful people have in common regardless of where they find their success: grit. Tenacity, perseverance, determination, drive, or moxie - all terms that describe the tendency to keep going when things get difficult, to keep pushing through failure, and to “never give up”. People who score high on measures of tenacity tend to be more successful than people who don’t score as high, even after controlling for things like intelligence and conscientiousness (Duckworth et al., 2007).

Notably, people can become more tenacious. Even simply learning that effort is more important than innate talent can increase perseverance on difficult tasks and can even improve performance (Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2016). Building yourself up and telling yourself not to give up can help keep you going when times get tough. It may be especially helpful to hear this from successful people or from people who have been through hardships similar to yours. When someone successful tells you not to give up, you may feel inspired to keep trying, to keep persevering, to keep putting effort in, and to never give up. In this article, you’ll see quotes from writers, philosophers, scientists, athletes, inventors, politicians, and others who have personally experienced hardship and failure and who didn’t give up.

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What Are "Never Giving up" Quotes Helpful For? (A Definition)

Diana Nyad is a long-distance swimmer who was the first to swim the dangerous, shark-filled waters from Cuba to Florida. As she discusses in the video below, her successful swim was preceded by four failed attempts. She talks about what went through her mind as she readied herself for her fifth attempt. She thought about her support team. She thought about the dangerous waters that she was about to head into. She thought about the pride that she felt at the effort that she and her team had put into all the previous attempts. Notably, she also thought about a Theodore Roosevelt quote. The specific quote that inspired Diana Nyad is the first listed below. However, to paraphrase for now, the quote was about making yourself uncomfortable in order to achieve something of note.

Video: Never, Ever Give Up | Diana Nyad

The Theodore Roosevelt quote, along with her training, her support team, and her “never give up” attitude helped inspire Nyad to finally make it across the long and dangerous stretch of water. Hearing inspiring and motivational words was one of the things that helped her summon the courage and drive to train and then finally make that fifth attempt after four failures. As part of an overall plan that may include putting in the work, having the support that you need, and maintaining a “can-do” spirit, inspirational, never-give-up quotes can help you reach your goals.

Quotes on Never Giving up on Yourself

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
―Theodore Roosevelt

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”
― H.G. Wells

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

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Quotes on Never Giving up on Your Dreams

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes

“If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.”
― Walt Disney

Quotes About Never Giving up on Your Goals

“It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
― Margaret Thatcher

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

Quotes on Never Giving up Hope

“It always seems impossible until it's done.”
― Nelson Mandela

“Real courage is … when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill, Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches

“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.”
― Helen Keller

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

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Quotes About Never Giving up on Work

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
― Dale Carnegie

“I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.”
― Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary: A Memoir

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Quotes on Never Giving up on Love

“My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let's think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can't ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment's notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow- that's vulnerability. Love is uncertain. It's incredibly risky. And loving someone leaves us emotionally exposed. Yes, it's scary, and yes, we're open to being hurt, but can you imagine your life without loving or being loved?”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Quotes on Never Giving up on Someone

“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Quotes About Never Giving up on Family

“This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It's knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

“My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be.”
― Joe Biden, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics

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Quotes About Not Giving up When Things Get Hard

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
― Maya Angelou

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. That surrender, even the smallest act of giving up, stays with me. So when I feel like quitting, I ask myself, which would I rather live with?”
― Lance Armstrong, It's Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

Famous Quotes About Never Giving Up

“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
― Babe Ruth

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”
― Abraham Lincoln

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Final Thoughts on Never Giving Up Quotes

Grit, perseverance, tenacity, determination, stamina: these are all synonyms for a tendency to never give up. In the face of challenges, difficulties, and obstacles, a person with grit will continue to work towards their goals. Even when achieving these goals takes time, perseverance means continuing to put the work in, refusing to ever give up.

In this article, we reviewed quotes from writers, athletes, politicians, philosophers, inventors, scientists, artists, and others who all advocate putting in the work. They talked about not giving up on yourself, your dreams, your goals, ambitions, or your hopes. Even in the face of hardship, adversity, and even failure these notable people still talk about continuing to put in the work. After reading all these quotes, you may also feel inspired to never give up and to persevere in your dreams and ambitions. Take this inspiration to heart and never give up!

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References

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of personality and social psychology, 92(6), 1087.
Eskreis-Winkler, L., Shulman, E. P., Young, V., Tsukayama, E., Brunwasser, S. M., & Duckworth, A. L. (2016). Using wise interventions to motivate deliberate practice. Journal of personality and social psychology, 111(5), 728.