Resilience Quotes: Short, Fun​ny, & Inspirational

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Hard times come for us all. Keep reading for quotes on resilience to help you stay strong and carry on.
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Resilience may be one of our most essential abilities. We will all face setbacks, endure hard times, and experience loss. If we want to live our lives fully, despite the adversity we face, resilience is critical (Herrman et al., 2011).​
Scholars have defined resilience as “having the capacity to persist in the face of change, to continue to develop with ever changing environments” (Folke, 2016). Importantly, it is an ability that we can all cultivate. Being reminded of our strength and the power of resilience is a good way to bolster our perseverance so that we can grow and transform in all the best ways. Check out these quotes on resilience if you need a reminder or inspiration to grow through what you’re going through.
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Short Resilience Quotes

  • “Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.” – Steve Maraboli
  • “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” – Robert Jordan
  • “A good half of the art of living is resilience.” – Alain de Botton
  • “Grief and resilience live together.” – Michelle Obama
  • “Resilience is an important key. Protect the key to your peaceful heart.” – Angelica Hopes
  • ​​“Cleaning the wound is often more painful than the cut itself.” – Brandon Sanderson

Funny Resilience Quotes

  • “In the face of adversity, we have a choice. We can be bitter, or we can be better. Those words are my North Star.” – Caryn Sullivan
  • “The human capacity for burden is like bamboo- far more flexible than you'd ever believe at first glance.” – Jodi Picoult
  • “If your heart is broken, make art with the pieces." – Shane Koyczan
  • “Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.” – Joan D. Vinge
  • “There’s no such thing as ruining your life. Life’s a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.” – Sophie Kinsella

Famous Resilience Quotes

  • “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
  • “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
  • “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese Proverb
  • “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
  • “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” – Maya Angelou
  • “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” - Nelson Mandela
  • “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius

Quotes About Resilience in Hard Times

  • “My scars remind me that I did indeed survive my deepest wounds. That in itself is an accomplishment. And they bring to mind something else, too. They remind me that the damage life has inflicted on me has, in many places, left me stronger and more resilient. What hurt me in the past has actually made me better equipped to face the present.” – Steve Goodier
  • “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
  • “If you have not confronted true horrors, understood evil, suffered hopelessness and despair, found faith, and made yourself completely accountable for your own choices, actions and outcomes, then I can guarantee that any acceptance you pretend to have will be as brittle and temporary as a snowball in the middle of summer.” – Graeme Rodaughan
  • “You must bear losses like a soldier, the voice told me, bravely and without complaint, and just when the day seems lost, grab your shield for another stand, another thrust forward. That is the juncture that separates heroes from the merely strong.” – Margaret George
  • “We cannot wait for the other shoe to drop, when the road becomes unendurably bumpy. If the aura of truth starts to wane and the light of the sky begins to splinter, only resilience can settle things.” – Erik Pevernagie
  • “There will be times in your life when things simply have to be replaced because they are tired, broken, worn out, harmful, outdated, or irrelevant. Take an inventory of the things that no longer serve your best and highest good so you can replace them with things which do.” – Susan C. Young
  • “No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience.” – Eric Greitens
  • “We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.” – Stephen Covey
  • “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

Resilience & Mindfulness Quotes

  • “Spending time alone in your own company reinforces your self-worth and is often the number-one way to replenish your resilience reserves.” – Sam Owen
  • “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
  • “Resilience is very different than being numb. Resilience means you experience, you feel, you fail, you hurt. You fall. But, you keep going.” – Yasmin Mogahed
  • “Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.” – Sharon Salzberg
  • “When we learn how to become resilient, we learn how to embrace the beautifully broad spectrum of the human experience.” – Jaeda Dewalt
  • “Definitions have evolved over time but fundamentally resilience is understood as referring to positive adaptation, or the ability to maintain or regain mental health, despite experiencing adversity.” – Helen Herrman
  • “My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.”  – Paula McLain

Resilience & Leadership Quotes

  • “You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can't jail the Revolution.” – Fred Hampton
  • “Resilience represents a constellation of characteristics that protect individuals from the potential negative effect of stressors.” – Ivan Robertson
  • “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
  • The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat. – Woodrow Wilson
  • “The human spirit is tremendously resilient. It can withstand the most horrific of circumstances, whether of human or divine creation... It is not these larger-than-life situations that beat us. It's the little things.” – Sheila Williams
  • “Strong people alone know how to organize their suffering so as to bear only the most necessary pain.” – Emil Dorian
  • “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
  • “Resilience is a process and a staircase. You might be on step four of the staircase, and I might be on step one, but we can both keep moving up the staircase so that our resilience levels will hopefully exceed the rising tide of stress.” – Glenn Schiraldi
  • “There are two kinds of strength. Power and the ability to wield it is obvious, but a resilience, the ability to resist power, is the other.” – Raymond E. Feist

Inspirational Resilience Quotes

  • “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Kahlil Gibran
  • “She stood in the storm and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.” – Elizabeth Edwards
  • “My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” – Mizuta Masahide
  • “It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.” – Bram Stoker
  • “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” – Helen Keller
  • “Like tiny seeds with potent power to push through tough ground and become mighty trees, we hold innate reserves of unimaginable strength. We are resilient.” – Catherine DeVrye
  • “I will not be another flower, picked for my beauty and left to die. I will be wild, difficult to find, and impossible to forget.” – Erin Van Vuren
  • “Resilience is our ability to bounce back from life’s challenges and unforeseen difficulties, providing mental protection from emotional and mental disorders.” – Michael Rutter

Resilience Quotes for Work

  • “Everyone has the ability to increase resilience to stress. It requires hard work and dedication, but over time, you can equip yourself to handle whatever life throws your way without adverse effects on your health. Training your brain to manage stress won't just affect the quality of your life, but perhaps even the length of it.” – Amy Morin
  • “Resilience represents a constellation of characteristics that protect individuals from the potential negative effect of stressors.” – Ivan Robertson
  • “No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead. That's the only way to keep the roads clear.” – Greg Kincaid
  • “Failure is a part of life. Success teaches you nothing, but failure teaches you resilience. It teaches you to pick yourself up and try again.” – Sarah Morgan
  • “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” – Angela Duckworth
  • “Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work through difficult problems.” – Gever Tulley
  • “Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you are going to do right now, and do it. Today is your lucky day.” – Will Durant
  • “Successful people demonstrate their resilience through their dedication to making progress every day, even if that progress is marginal.” – Jonathan Mills

Resilience Quotes for Sports

  • “The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?” – Ayn Rand
  • “It may sound strange, but many champions are made champions by setbacks.” – Bob Richards
  • “Only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
  • “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
  • “What helps you persevere is your resilience and commitment.” – Roy T. Bennett
  • “I tried and failed. I tried again and again and succeeded.” – Gail Borden
  • “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying ‘I will try again tomorrow’.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
  • “When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realize that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.” – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
  • “Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” – Og Mandino
  • “I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance. Never settle for the path of least resistance” – Lee Ann Womack

Resilience Quotes for Students

  • “It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.” – Dieter F. Uchtdorf
  •  “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
  • “The day is what you make it! So why not make it a great one?” – Steve Schulte
  • “The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” – Jimmy Johnson
  • “Resilience arises out of a belief in one’s own self-efficacy, the ability to deal with change, and use of a repertoire of problem-solving skills.” – Brigid Gillespie
  • “No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not entirely own us. It can’t take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.” – Ryder Carroll
  • “Forgive yourself for your faults and your mistakes and move on.” – Les Brown
  • “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” – Thomas Edison
  • “On the other side of a storm is the strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin.” – Gregory S Williams
  • “Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up.” – Mary Holloway

Articles Related to Resilience

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Resilience

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Resilience Quotes

Resilience is something that we will all need at some time or another. A powerful or inspiring quote may be just what we need to help us find the strength to persevere. For more quotes on resilience, check out this video:

Video: 30+ Resilience Quotes and Quotes About Resilience

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References

  • Folke, C. (2016). Resilience (republished). Ecology and society, 21(4).
  • Herrman, H., Stewart, D. E., Diaz-Granados, N., Berger, E. L., Jackson, B., & Yuen, T. (2011). What is resilience?. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 56(5), 258-265.
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