Earl Nightingale Quotes

American motivational speaker (1921-1989)

Earl Nightingale V (March 12, 1921 – March 25, 1989) was an American radio speaker and author, dealing mostly with the subjects of human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence. He was the voice during the early 1950s of Sky King, the hero of a radio adventure series, and was a WGN radio program host from 1950 to 1956. Nightingale was the author of The Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has termed "…one of the great motivational books of all time."

From: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.

There are times for all of us when all the laughter seems to be gone, but we should not permit these periods to last too long. When we've lost our sense of humor, there isn't very much left. We become ridiculous. We must then go to war against the whole world, and that's a war we cannot win.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

we come to a rather strange fact. We tend to minimize the things we can do, the goals we can achieve, and yet, for an equally strange reason, we think others can do things that we cannot. I want you to know that that is not true. You do have deep reservoirs of talent and ability within you and you can have the things you want.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.

"George Bernard Shaw said: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal.

No man can get rich himself unless he enriches others.

Act as though it were impossible to fail,

There is a time when one must decide either to risk everything to fulfill one's dreams or sit for the rest of one's life in the backyard.

Once this law is fully understood, any thinking person can tell his own fortune. If he wants more, he must be of more service to those from whom he receives his return. If he wants less, he has only to reduce his service. This is the price you must pay for what you want.

The only thing you can count on for certain is change. Don't wait for it -be an agent of change. Help bring change about.

We live by faith or we do not live at all. Either we venture or we vegetate. If we venture, we do so by faith, simply because we cannot know the end of anything at its beginning. We risk marriage on faith or we stay single. We prepare for a profession by faith or we give up before we start. By faith, we move mountains of opposition or we’re stopped by molehills.

A success is anyone who is doing deliberately a worthy predetermined job, because that's what he decided to do ... deliberately.

The other thing is, as we grew up, people had a way of making us feel uncomfortable when they saw us using imagination. When we came up with new ideas they were often greeted with smears or sarcastic laughter or comments such as that’s a crazy idea. It won’t work. It’s never been done before, or we always do it this way and so on. These are idea killers. And, I’m sure you’ve heard them and many, many more. They stifle creativity. Sometimes, too often really, we use them on others. But even worse, we use them on ourselves. We actually kill our own ideas before they’re given a chance to prove themselves one way or the other.