Theme
Growth
Getting better, learning by doing, becoming who you could be.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
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Verified quotes about growth
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing”
“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery”
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative”
“Every artist was first an amateur”
“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon them”
“I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it”
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship”
“I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress”
“If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you'll be a better person”
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving”
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves”
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls”
“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”
“The past is but the beginning of a beginning”
“The price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change”
“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home”
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit”
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery”
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started”
“What does not kill me makes me stronger”
“When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them”
“All things are difficult before they are easy”
“Champions keep playing until they get it right”
“Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do”
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through”
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
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Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about growth — but misattributed
Popular growth lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”
ReallyHorace
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”
ReallyUnknown (19th-century American press)
“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream”
ReallyAileen Miga & Janice Hughes · not Lao Tzu
“Believe in yourself and all that you are”
ReallyChristian D. Larson · not Christian D. Larson
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together is success”
ReallyEdward Everett Hale
“Do one thing every day that scares you”
ReallyMary Schmich
“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time”
ReallyAnonymous (Arabic & Rabbinic proverb tradition)
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”
ReallyPlutarch
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”
ReallyPlutarch · not Socrates
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”
ReallyPablo Picasso
“Every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack”
ReallyLouis XVIII of France · not Napoleon Bonaparte
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”
ReallyLeo Tolstoy
“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn”
ReallyWilliam Nicholson · not C.S. Lewis
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny”
ReallyChristopher Markus, Stephen McFeely and Michael Petroni · not C.S. Lewis
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it”
ReallyVincent van Gogh · not Pablo Picasso
“I have forgotten the books I have read and the dinners I have eaten, but they both helped make me”
ReallyRalph Waldo Emerson · not Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”
ReallyXúnzǐ (Xun Kuang) · not Confucius
“I was a young man with uninformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them”
Really“Lady Hope” (Elizabeth Reid Cotton) · not Charles Darwin