Looking for the best John C. Maxwell quotes for success?
John C. Maxwell is widely considered to be one of the world’s top leadership thinkers, coaching some of the top CEO and business leaders with his classic life and business lessons for success.
The author, speaker and coach has inspired millions around the world through his books, events and one on one coaching. With over 40 published books there is an abundance of powerful lessons you can learn from him.
I’ve compiled the ultimate list of John C. Maxwell quotes, with each one providing a valuable lesson to help you lead a successful life.
117 John C. Maxwell Quotes
1. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.” – John C. Maxwell
2. “Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.” – John C. Maxwell
3. “The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.” – John C. Maxwell
4. “Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.” – John C. Maxwell
5. “Have the humility to learn from those around you.” – John C. Maxwell
6. “As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.” – John C. Maxwell
7. “We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.” – John C. Maxwell
8. “People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.” – John C. Maxwell
9. “The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.” – John C. Maxwell
10. “If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.” – John C. Maxwell
11. “Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.” – John C. Maxwell
12. “Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.” – John C. Maxwell
13. “The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.” – John C. Maxwell
14. “Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.” – John C. Maxwell
15. “Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.” – John C. Maxwell
16. “The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.” – John C. Maxwell
17. “A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.” – John C. Maxwell
18. “Growth inside fuels growth outside.” – John C. Maxwell
19. “You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.” – John C. Maxwell
20. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” – John C. Maxwell
21. “If we are growing we are always going to be outside our comfort zone.” – John C. Maxwell
22. “Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” – John C. Maxwell
23. “We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.” – John C. Maxwell
24. “The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.” – John C. Maxwell
25. “Speak the truth. Transparency breeds legitimacy.” – John C. Maxwell
26. “Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.” – John C. Maxwell
27. “Although it’s admirable to be ambitious and hard-working, it’s more desirable to be smart-working.” – John C. Maxwell
28. “Often people fail to start or complete a task because they don’t see any connection between what they’re doing and what they really want to accomplish in life.” – John C. Maxwell
29. “Earn the right to be heard by listening to others. Seek to understand a situation before making judgements about it.” – John C. Maxwell
30. “If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.” – John C. Maxwell
31. “Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.” – John C. Maxwell
32. “The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying.” – John C. Maxwell
33. “As you begin changing your thinking, start immediately to change your behavior. Begin to act the part of the person you would like to become. Take action on your behavior. Too many people want to feel, then take action. This never works.” – John C. Maxwell
34. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” – John C. Maxwell
35. “Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.” – John C. Maxwell
36. “One of the major keys to success is to keep moving forward on the journey, making the best of the detours and interruptions, turning adversity into advantage.” – John C. Maxwell
37. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” – John C. Maxwell
38. “To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask him for a hand.” – John C. Maxwell
39. “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” – John C. Maxwell
40. “To change your life you need to change your priorities.” – John C. Maxwell
41. “Dreams don’t work unless you do.” – John C. Maxwell
42. “If you want to be positive, upbeat, and passionate, you need to take responsibility for being that way.” – John C. Maxwell
43. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – John C. Maxwell
44. “Learn something new today, reflect on what you have learned, and apply it as soon as possible.” – John C. Maxwell
45. “The difference between where we are and where we want to be is created by the changes we are willing to make in our lives. When you want something you’ve never had, you must do something you’ve never done to get it.” – John C. Maxwell
46. “Dreams require down payments. Dreams are free, but the journey isn’t. There is a price to pay. First, you must pay the price of dealing with criticism from people who matter. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.’ Second, you must pay the price of overcoming your fears. Failure, rejection, and looking foolish are common fears – but they are just feelings that can be conquered and removed from your thoughts. Finally, you must be willing to pay the price of hard work in order to realize your dream.” – John C. Maxwell
47. “Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.” – John C. Maxwell
48. “The only one you should compare yourself to is you. Your mission is to become better today than you were yesterday.” – John C. Maxwell
49. “To achieve all that is possible, we must attempt the impossible. To be all we can be, we must dream of being more.” – John C. Maxwell
50. “Every worthwhile accomplishment has a price tag attached to it. The question is always whether you are willing to pay the price to attain it – in hard work, sacrifice, patience, faith, and endurance.” – John C. Maxwell
51. “It’s said that a wise person learns from his mistakes. A wiser one learns from others’ mistakes. But the wisest person of all learns from others’s successes.” – John C. Maxwell
52. “Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.” – John C. Maxwell
53. “Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.” – John C. Maxwell
54. “Be intentional to add value to every person you meet everyday.” – John C. Maxwell
55. “To succeed in life, we must stay within our strength zone but continually move outside our comfort zone.” – John C. Maxwell
56. “Giving is the highest level of living.” – John C. Maxwell
57. “Don’t buy into the notion that mistakes can somehow be avoided. They can’t be.” – John C. Maxwell
58. “Seven Steps to Success 1) Make a commitment to grow daily. 2) Value the process more than events. 3) Don’t wait for inspiration. 4) Be willing to sacrifice pleasure for opportunity. 5) Dream big. 6) Plan your priorities. 7) Give up to go up.” – John C. Maxwell
59. “The person who does only what he must when he is in the mood or when it’s convenient isn’t going to be successful.” – John C. Maxwell
60. “The highway of life is filled with flat squirrels that couldn’t make a decision.” – John C. Maxwell
61. “A dream becomes a reality as a result of your actions, and your actions are controlled, to a large extent, by your habits.” – John C. Maxwell
62. “Good ideas have expiration dates. You need to act before they become dated, irrelevant or otherwise spoiled.” – John C. Maxwell
63. “You will become on the outside, what you believe on the inside.” – John C. Maxwell
64. “It is our decisions not our conditions that determine our quality of life.” – John C. Maxwell
65. “The longer you wait to do something you should do now, the greater the odds that you will never actually do it.” – John C. Maxwell
66. “Successful people reject rejection.” – John C. Maxwell
67. “It is hard to feel bad about yourself when you are doing something good for someone else. There are a lot of ways to lift your self-esteem, but making a positive difference in another’s life has got to be my best leadership guidance. Serving others and working to add value to them will lift your spirits in a way that nothing else will. Trust me on this one.” – John C. Maxwell
68. “To move forward today, you must learn to say good-bye to yesterday’s hurts, tragedies and baggage. You can’t build a monument to past problems and fail forward.” – John C. Maxwell
69. “To achieve your dreams, you must embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you’re not failing, you’re probably not really moving forward.” – John C. Maxwell
70. “People who blame others for their failures never overcome them. They simply move from problem to problem. To reach your potential, you must continually improve yourself, and you can’t do that if you don’t take responsibility for your actions and learn from your mistakes.” – John C. Maxwell
71. “The greatest of all miracles is that we need not be tomorrow what we are today. The greatest of all insights is that we cannot be tomorrow what we do not do today. That is why today matters.” – John C. Maxwell
72. “The process of achievement comes through repeated failures and the constant struggle to climb to a higher level.” – John C. Maxwell
73. “The better you are at surrounding yourself with people of high potential, the greater your chance for success.” – John C. Maxwell
74. “Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.” – John C. Maxwell
75. “There is absolutely no way to increase your income quicker than reading 30 minutes a day.” – John C. Maxwell
76. “Everything you now do is something you have chosen to do. Some people don’t want to believe that. But if you’re over age twenty-one, your life is what you’re making of it. To change your life, you need to change your priorities.” – John C. Maxwell
77. “The only thing we can control is what we do in the present. The more we replay yesterday, the further we get from today’s opportunities. And the further away we move from opportunities, the tougher the road is to get back. Opportunities never look as good coming as they do going, and they wait for no one. We need to be highly attentive to spot them. And we must be focused on our present capabilities, not past regrets.” – John C. Maxwell
78. “Why did the achievers overcome problems while thousands are overwhelmed by theirs? They refused to hold on to the common excuses for failure. They turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones. They realized that they couldn’t determine every circumstance in life but they could determine their choice of attitude towards every circumstance.” – John C. Maxwell
79. “We cannot achieve our wildest dreams by remaining who we are.” – John C. Maxwell
80. “There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don’t want to make mistakes.” – John C. Maxwell
81. “We cannot choose how many years we will live, but we can choose how much life those years will have. We cannot control the beauty of our face, but we can control the expression on it. We cannot control life’s difficult moments but we can choose to make life less difficult. We cannot control the negative atmosphere of the world, but we can control the atmosphere of our minds. Too often we try to choose and control things we cannot. Too seldom we choose to control what we can…our attitude.” – John C. Maxwell
82. “Perhaps our greatest power in life is the power to choose. Without question, choices are the most determining factor in how our lives turn out.” – John C. Maxwell
83. “If your desire is a 10 but your self-esteem is a 5, you’ll never perform at the level of a 10. You’ll perform as a 5 or lower. People are ever able to outperform their self-image.” – John C. Maxwell
84. “We won’t fully experience joy until we’ve answered life’s biggest question: Why am I here?” – John C. Maxwell
85. “You can never be more outside of you, than what’s in you.” – John C. Maxwell
86. “A leader is a reader.” – John C. Maxwell
87. “The key to your success, to my success, to everyone’s success is determined by our daily agenda. What you and I do every day is either making us or breaking us, we’re either preparing or repairing. So when somebody says, ‘John, I want to be a success. Where do I start?’ I say, It’s very simple. Start with today.” – John C. Maxwell
88. “Find something you like to do so much that you would gladly do it for nothing; then learn to do it so well that people are happy to pay you for it.” – John C. Maxwell
89. “Those closest to me will determine the level of my success.” – John C. Maxwell
90. “Difficulties seldom defeat people; lack of faith in themselves usually does it.” – John C. Maxwell
91. “Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.” – John C. Maxwell
92. “Experience teaches nothing, but evaluated experience teaches everything.” – John C. Maxwell
93. “The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get.” – John C. Maxwell
94. “Only those who see their dream are able to seize their dream.” – John C. Maxwell
95. “When we are foolish, we want to conquer the world. When we are wise, we want to conquer ourselves. That begins when we do what we should no matter how we feel about it.” – John C. Maxwell
96. “If you want to reach your potential and become the person you were created to be, you must do much more than just experience life and hope that you learn what you need along the way. You must go out of your way to seize growth opportunities as if your future depended on it. Why? Because it does. Growth doesn’t just happen–not for me, not for you, not for anybody. You HAVE TO go after it.” – John C. Maxwell
97. “If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don’t. If you’d like to win but think you can’t it’s almost certain you won’t. Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can. A happy person is not a person with a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. I may not be able to change the world I see around me, but I can change the way I see the world within me.” – John C. Maxwell
98. “People are funny. When they are young, they will spend their health to get wealth. Later, they will gladly pay all they have trying to get their health back.” – John C. Maxwell
99. “The primary limitation in life is our low expectations for ourselves and others. When we expect minimum results, that’s usually what we get.” – John C. Maxwell
100. “The ability to understand people is one of the greatest assets anyone can ever have.” – John C. Maxwell
101. “They can’t hurt you unless you let them.” – John C. Maxwell
102. “Every sailor knows that you can’t sail a ship that isn’t moving forward, strong leaders understand that to change direction, you first have to create forward progress.” – John C. Maxwell
103. “If you are willing to change your thinking, you can change your feelings. If you change your feelings, you can change your actions. And changing your actions – based on good thinking – can change your life.” – John C. Maxwell
104. “If something can be done 80% as well by someone else, delegate!” – John C. Maxwell
105. “We tend to get in life what we are willing to tolerate.” – John C. Maxwell
106. “If you want to make a positive impact, no matter how far-reaching, start at home. Treat your family members like treasures.” – John C. Maxwell
107. “You cannot buy or win happiness. You must choose it.” – John C. Maxwell
108. “Remember, it’s the finish, not the start, that counts the most in life.” – John C. Maxwell
109. “Responsibility is the most important ability that a person can possess.” – John C. Maxwell
110. “Successful people don’t wait for everything to be perfect to move forward.” – John C. Maxwell
111. “Momentum solves 80% of your problems.” – John C. Maxwell
112. “Losers focus on what they are going through; winners focus on what they are going to.” – John C. Maxwell
113. “Failure is an inside job. So is success. If you want to achieve, you have to win the war in your thinking first. You can’t let the failure outside you get inside you.” – John C. Maxwell
114. “For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. That’s the Law of Significance.” – John C. Maxwell
115. “If people around you don’t believe in you, if they don’t encourage you, then you need to find some people who do.” – John C. Maxwell
116. “Tenacious people don’t rely on luck, fate, or destiny for their success. And when conditions become difficult, they keep working.” – John C. Maxwell
117. “There are two paths people can take. They can either play now and pay later, or pay now and play later. Regardless of the choice, one thing is certain. Life will demand a payment.” – John C. Maxwell
Did you find these John C. Maxwell Quotes inspiring?
If you liked these John C. Maxwell quotes then please share this post to help inspire others.
