In moments of stress, a quote can help focus a person’s thoughts. The right words at the right time are often a good thing.
The following quotes are inspirational quotes to help in those moments:
#1. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily. (Zig Ziglar)
#2. Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery. (Mahatma Gandhi)
#3. If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome. (Michael Jordan)
#4. It is 10 years since I used drugs or alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and, generally, a bright outlook… The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational. (Russell Brand)
#5. If it wasn’t for that rehab center, I probably wouldn’t have been here. In terms of recovery, it has been very important for me to be a part of a recovery community, to actively be around my people because they understand me. They get it. (Macklemore)
#6. Addiction is just a way of trying to get at something else. Something bigger. Call it transcendence if you want, but it’s a rat in a maze. We all want the same thing. We all have this hole. The thing you want offers relief, but it’s a trap. (Tess Callahan)
#7. Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. (August Wilson)
#8. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. (Carl Bard)
#9. What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood. (Alice Miller)
#10. At first, addiction is maintained by pleasure, but the intensity of the pleasure gradually diminishes and the addiction is then maintained by the avoidance of pain. (Frank Tallis)
#11. Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn’t matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover. (Craig Ferguson)
#12. Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction. (Christopher Kennedy Lawford)
#13. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships. It cannot occur in isolation. (Judith Herman)
#14. Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it. (John Grisham)
#15. 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)
#16. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. (Nelson Mandela)
#17. I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. (Edgar Allen Poe)
#18. Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles and you have to change. (Jamie Lee Curtis)
#19. Addictions… started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn’t seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were… less intelligent than goldfish. (William Gibson)
#20. Recovery is something that you have to work on every single day and it’s something that doesn’t get a day off. (Demi Lovato)
#21. Everybody has to learn that the world works in very specific ways, and you’re not in charge of it. (Samuel L. Jackson)
#22. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. (Helen Keller)
#23. Realizing your drug addiction is the first step in the right direction. (Anonymous)
#24. We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle. (Mahatma Gandhi)
#25 The only way to have a friend is to be one. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
#26. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. (Henry Ford)
#27. If you claim something, you can own it. (Carrie Fisher)
#28. You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. (Johnny Cash)
#29. Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain)
#30. I recognize that I have the ability to be selfish, but I also recognize that you can’t be happy if you only care about yourself at the expense of other people. (Russell Brand)
#31, An addict never stops growing. Stupider. (William S. Burroughs)
#32. There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. (Aldous Huxley)
#33. Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. (Joseph Campbell)
#34. Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves. (Charlotte Bronte)
#35. At the end of the day, whether or not those people are comfortable with how you’re living your life doesn’t matter. What matters is whether you’re comfortable with it. (Dr. Phil McGraw)
#36. I really mean when I say my biggest fear in early recovery was that I would never have fun again. The beautiful truth is that recovery has given me freedom and the confidence to go out in the world and leave my own mark. (Tom Stoddart)
#37. Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got. (Anonymous)
#38. Change must start from the individual. And the individual must want and feel ready to make such change. (Efrat Cybulkiewicz)
#39. In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths. (Drew Barrymore)
#40. If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else. (Yogi Berra)
#41. Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved. (Helen Keller)
#42. Recovery from addiction requires hard work, a proper attitude, and learning skills to stay sober, not drinking alcohol or using other drugs. Successful drug recovery or alcohol recovery involves changing attitudes, acquiring knowledge, and developing skills to meet the many challenges of sobriety. (Dr. Dennis Daley)
#43. If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime. (Benjamin Sáenz)
#44. Addiction begins with the hope that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside. (Jean Kilbourne)
#45. There’s a peculiar thing that happens every time you get clean. You go through this sensation of rebirth. There’s something intoxicating about the process of the comeback, and that becomes an element in the whole cycle of addiction. (Anthony Keidis)
#46. I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat. That was until I became one… (Cathryn Kemp)
#47. Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors. (Gabor Mate)
#48. It takes a strong person to stand up to his or her fate and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom and success, but I believe in you. (Pax Prentiss)
#49. Recovery is not for people who need it. It’s for people who want it. (Anonymous)
#50. It’s like an addiction, one I battle every day. It appeared at first drink. I was becoming the very thing I feared – my father’s son. I wanted to be as far away from that Threshold as possible. I swore I’d never take another sip, no matter how crazy it made me. No matter how much it called to me. Resisting became easier with time. (Sara Ella)
#51. Addiction: the disease that makes you too selfish to see the havoc that you created or care about the people whose lives you shattered. (Anonymous)
#52. What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that’s toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay. (Moby)
#53. Unless an addict wants to quit, they’ll find a way to get drugs, and as soon as they leave the rehab facility they’ll pick up where they left off. (Mitch Winehouse)
#54. We use all kinds of ways to escape – all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain. (Pema Chödrön)
#55. At every stage, addiction is driven by one of the most powerful, mysterious, and vital forces of human existence. What drives addiction is longing — a longing not just of brain, belly or loin, but finally of the heart. (Cornelius Platinga)
#56. You cannot quite understand the power of addiction until you have seen it firsthand. Until you have seen it eat like acid through everything you are. It is astounding to watch. Its slow and total corrosion of your entire life is mesmerizing. As you watch it, you keep thinking, “At some point, the corrosion will stop. There is no way it will be able to eat through this next thing. This next thing is too important to me.” But then it does. It eats through everything. And you realize you are dealing with a vast and inhuman power. (Mother Horse Eyes)
#57. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism. (Carl Jung)
#58. I think if you were Satan and you were setting around trying to think up something that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics. (Cormac McCarthy)
#59. Addiction makes love impossible. (Bell Hooks)
#60, We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking. (Santosh Kalwar)
#61. I used to condemn junkies, like they could get off the stuff if they really wanted to, and that is just as stupid as saying, “You could grow eyes in the back of your head if you really wanted to.” (Philip K. Dick)
#62. The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one’s desire for escape and abstinence from one’s addiction. (Debra L. Kaplan)