60 Growth quotes to inspire and instruct.

History’s best quotes about growth cover progress, success, and how it feels along the way.

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Choose from these growth quotes loaded with lessons and motivation.

Growth is inevitable, they say. Is the growth you really want inevitable, though? If you have specific goals and priorities in life, then growth comes from constant effort.

To stay inspired and keep growing, history’s greats left us with a legacy of growth quotes to choose from. These quotes about growth cover personal development, professional success, and the nature of growth as we develop.

Pick your favorite growth quotes and put them to use in inspirational posters, motivational collages, and cards or letters to those who need the boost. The more places you think of to use them, the more these insights can nurture growth in everyone around you.

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Table of Contents:

Personal Growth Quotes

Quotes About Success and Growth

Quotes on Change and Growth

Inspirational Growth

Short Growth Quotes

Personal growth quotes to live by.

Growth is not only part of life, but the source of it. Infancy and childhood are defined by growing bones and minds, and in adulthood, the kinds of growth we want become highly individualized. Self-growth quotes help us understand what we want and how to grow in that direction.

Life growth quotes do inspire, but first they help us put what we want into words. There’s little room for avoidant coping with these self-growth quotes front-and-center on a poster or collage. Find the quotes that mean the most to you and consider all the places you could use them.

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There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Ernest Hemingway
Sometimes good things fall apart so better things could fall together.”

Marilyn Monroe

At some point, we lose progress in our growth. When we grow again, we grow stronger and go further. Growth is fragile until we have the chance to reinforce our gains.

We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”

Rick Warren,

The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Jane Goodall

Personal growth changes you, and it changes the world around you, too.

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.”
Charles Dickens , Great Expectations
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual.”

Samuel Smiles

The biggest blockade to growth is apathy. Self-growth quotes start with a little self-help.

My turn shall also come: I sense the spreading of a wing.”

Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems

The biggest blockade to growth is apathy. Self-growth quotes start with a little self-help.

Before we see the gains of our growth, it’s helpful to use motivational growth quotes like this one to remember that some things take time.

Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.”
Heath L. Buckmaster , Box of Hair: A Fairy Tale
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”

Marcel Proust

Mental growth quotes point to a kind of growth that’s almost impossible to measure — but is supremely important.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
Albert Einstein
Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”
Les Brown
Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy

Life growth quotes often remind us that growth can be arduous. The frustration and dedication are worth it, though. This quote helps us remember why.

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Quotes about success and growth in the workplace

Business quotes about growth aren’t always about performance. Sometimes, they’re about satisfaction. Success, too, is more about the fulfillment of a goal than “arriving” to a destination. These career growth quotes focus on what success and growth really mean.

Quotes about success and growth are tools for developing a mindset that makes work and leadership come more naturally. Growth still requires effort, but these quotes shift the focus to start by growing your mindset.

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One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”
Abraham Maslow
Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.”

James Cash Penney

Team growth quotes show how collaboration results in a machine of shared development that everyone gets to take with them.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.”

Plato

Looks like Plato must have had coworkers. This is a slightly ironic quote that your work friends could get a laugh from. Use this in a card and add a personal note in the margins.

Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
Carrie Fisher
Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.”

Frank A. Clark

Leadership growth quotes offer nuggets of advice to help leaders grow in the best direction.

People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Rob Siltanen

Reach for the stars, and you’ll grow trying. You might not land where you intended, but grow, you will.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
Warren Buffett
Success isn't about the end result, it's about what you learn along the way.”
Vera Wang
All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.
Calvin Coolidge
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

Edward Abbey,

The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West.

Growth is inevitable, but the growth we want only comes with purpose.

I would like to think that all of my successes in life are really just the fruit of my failures.”
Yvie Oddly
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.”
Harvey S. Firestone
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Quotes on change and growth — because they don’t always go together.

All growth comes from change, but not all change leads to growth. One of the hardest realities about lasting growth is that it only keeps up if your effort does. Growth transformation quotes expose the nitty gritty of persistence.

These excerpts from authors, leaders, artists, and more each provide a unique vantage point at how lasting growth feels along the way. Keep reading for more change quotes, too.

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Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness.”

Jean Vanier

If you’re set on growth, do you have a realistic view of where you are now? Sometimes, that requires confronting weaknesses.

Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.”
Steve Maraboli
It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.”
Roy T. Bennett
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

Maya Angelou

Growth is always a series of changes. Who could benefit from this message in a card or letter?

Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
John Keats , Letters of John Keats
When we’re growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.”

Elliot Page

Growth isn’t as easy as deciding on something. It’s the result of space, time, and ongoing change.

Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy
It is never too late to be who you might have been.”

George Eliot

As long as we can change, we’re alive; and as long as we’re alive, we can change.

Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping.”

Julia Margaret Cameron

Use this message on a poster wherever people could use the reminder that change is not always linear.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative.”
Anais Nin
A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.”

Paul Klee

This inspirational growth quote is perfect for a flyer promoting a one-day event.

Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.”
Jonathan Majors
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Inspirational growth quotes to spur — and maintain — momentum.

Great oaks from little acorns grow, and great growth comes from the right inspirational growth quotes. Can you think of a time when you broke new ground in something you worked hard to change? These positive growth quotes bottle that feeling so you can taste it whenever you need to remember why we work so hard to grow.

Inspirational growth quotes are perfect to spark change or to maintain your effort when motivation wanes. These are perfect to use in banners, posters, and flyers for mass inspiration, plus cards or collages for personalized encouragement. It’s all easy to make in Adobe Express — no experience required.

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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

If you had the intention to grow before but didn’t reach your goal, today is a new opportunity to start.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”
Ronald Reagan
Always work hard and have fun in what you do because I think that's when you're more successful. You have to choose to do it.”

Simone Biles

If you want to grow in specific and significant ways, that requires choosing growth and committing to pursue it.

Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life.”
Deborah Day
Permit yourself to change your mind when something is no longer working for you.”

Nedra Glover Tawwab

Sometimes, growth means abandoning one thing to shift your attention to another. The growth we want isn’t always linear, and it isn’t static, either.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”
George Eliot
We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”

Walter Mosley , Blue Light

The metaphor in this quote is striking. Imagine what it could look like on a poster.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
Angela Davis
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
Thomas Jefferson
Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”

Andy Rooney

How often is growth the goal, and how often is growing the goal?

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, we are happy when we are growing.”
William Butler Yeats
Seeds of faith are always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth.”

Susan L. Taylor

Spiritual growth quotes look at how faith changes and grows, too.

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Growth quotes — short but just as powerful.

Bigger isn’t always better, and sometimes, precision marks a quicker route to change. These growth quotes, short though they are, each capture the essence of growth in memorable ways.

These short growth quotes are easy to memorize, too, turning them into affirmations that can build healthy thought patterns. Many of these are famous quotes about growth by leaders, artists, and celebrated personalities with the best track record for growth. Imagine what these short quotes could do in social media posts (like inspirational Instagram stories), or on banners, posters, or cards to share.

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Growth comes from chaos, not order.”
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
John F. Kennedy
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

Frederick Douglass

Famous growth quotes often have fascinating historical contexts. Douglass was a prolific social reformer and civil rights voice who faced and overcame incredible struggles.

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.”

Chinese Proverb

For another way to say the same, there’s also the popular idiom, “don’t let the grass grow under your feet.”

We can’t become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”

Oprah Winfrey

If we want to grow, we need to change. Many famous growth quotes reiterate this.

Change brings opportunity.”
Nido Qubein
Change is made of choices, and choices are made of character.”

Amanda Gorman

Change is made of choices, choices of character, and character forever altered by the resulting growth.

Tradition is nothing but ancestral peer pressure.”
Indya Moore
Love dies only when growth stops.”

Pearl S. Buck

Growth isn’t just for work and personal goals. Love, too, requires constant growth as individuals and as a pair.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.”
Napoleon Hill
All change is not growth, all movement is not forward.”
Ellen Glasgow
Growth is the only evidence of life.”

John Henry Newman

Once we stop growing, we stop living.

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Tips to use growth quotes as realistic and relatable messages.

Growth quotes can be tricky to use. Put in the wrong context or format, they can come off as corny or overly simplified. To inspire real growth, choose and use your growth quotes wisely.

Here's how:

Exercise: choose the best of the best.

For a growth quote to really hit home, choose from the best of the best.

Once you have a short list of favorites, think about your audience. Who will see or receive these quotes? What do you know about them?

Based on that, rate each of your favorite growth quotes on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the best) on:

  1. Current relevance to the audience
  2. Balance of realism and optimism
  3. Relatability to the audience
  4. Potential to inspire and resonate

Add up the scores for each quote, and the highest rated growth quote is the one to use.

Adobe Express can help.

Adobe Express has templates and customization tools to put your favorite growth quotes to work. If you want to use growth quotes in cards, letters, posters, banners, photo collages, flyers, social media posts, or other creative projects, Adobe Express makes it as simple as picking a template and personalizing it, or making your own idea with easy-to-use tools. Whatever message you want to transmit, Adobe Express brings it to life, no experience required.

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