In this post, we’ll read motivational David Goggins quotes who is an American ultramarathon runner, ultra-distance cyclist, triathlete, motivational speaker, and retired US Navy SEAL.
David Goggins became famous for his incredible endurance and mental toughness, as well as his inspirational story of overcoming adversity.
Goggins (born in 1975) grew up in poverty and he struggled with obesity and was often bullied as a child. He enlisted in the military as a Navy SEAL in 2001 after going through the toughest training and participated in combat. He then pursued a career as an endurance athlete and ultramarathon runner and showed extreme endurance by pushing his mental and physical limits.
He became a motivational speaker and he encourages people to adopt a “can’t hurt me” mindset and to push beyond their perceived limitations to reach their full potential.
Let’s read some of the best David Goggins quotes on mind, life, resilience, mental toughness and more.
David Goggins Quotes
1. “Your brain is the most powerful weapon in the world.”
2. “If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.”
3. “If you sit there and have that mentality of ‘triple down on what you’re good at,’ you’re never going to grow. You’re always going to stay the same.”
4. “Like the Taoists say, those that know don’t speak, and those who speak, well, they don’t know jack shit.”
5. “The only thing more contagious than a good attitude is a bad one.”
6. “You have to have pride in yourself. You have to have something weather it’s your last name or just the smallest thing. You have to be proud of yourself.”
Motivational David Goggins Quotes
1. “I don’t stop when I’m tired, I stop when I’m done.”
2. “You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.”
3. “Most wars are won or lost in our own heads.”
4. “Greatness pulls mediocrity into the mud. Get out there and get after it.”
5. “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
6. “No one is going to come help you. No one’s coming to save you.”
7. “I was the sum total of the obstacles I’d overcome.”
8. “Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you’re fucking nuts.”
9. “I’m broken and still here…”
10. “Until you know what you want to stand for, you’ll always just be sitting down.”
11. “You are always the purpose.”
12. “You may lose the battle of the morning but don’t lose the war of the day.”
13. “Nobody cares what you did yesterday. What have you done today to better yourself?”
14. “I want to be the standard.”
David Goggins Quotes on Mind
1. “Give yourself a NO WAY OUT and your mind will realize that”.
2. “A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind.”
3. “Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.”
4. “The vast majority of us are slaves to our minds. Most don’t even make the first effort when it comes to mastering their thought process because it’s a never-ending chore and impossible to get right every time.”
5. “The more things you can do to get outside of that zone that makes you feel good, the stronger your mind is going to get… It’s not fun, but now my mind is used to it.”
6. “Your entitled mind is dead weight. Cut it loose. Don’t focus on what you think you deserve. Take aim on what you are willing to earn!”
7. “Being uncomfortable is not being exhausted. Being uncomfortable is your mind quitting before your body.”
David Goggins Quotes on Life
1. “Real life is sh*t. You can’t google that man.”
2. “Make up your own mission statement. What do you want to be in life?”
3. “The number one purpose in life is to better oneself.”
4. “You need to get to a point in your life where there is nothing on the docket. And still give your best.”
5. “Life is the most brutal endurance sport of all time!”
6. “You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”
7. “Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.”
8. “You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.”
David Goggins Quotes on Mental Toughness
1. “The only way you gain mental toughness is to do things you’re not happy doing. If you continue doing things that you’re satisfied and make you happy, you’re not getting stronger.”
2. “Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life.
3. “People take classes on self-help, mental toughness, breathing control – the only way to get tougher is to put yourself in hellacious situations.”
4. “If you can’t control your brain, and your brain controls you, you are messed.”
5. “People hear my story and say this guy is sadistic. I realize how the brain works.”
6. “I swam underwater for 50 meters at a time and walked the length of the pool underwater, with a brick in each hand, all on a single breath.”
7. “A warrior is a guy that goes, I’m here again today. I’ll be here again tomorrow and the next day. It’s a person who puts no limit on what’s possible.”
8. “And that’s how you get through things. You immerse yourself in wherever it is And you become that.”
9. “I’m a big believer in doing things that make you uncomfortable. So, we live in a world where we want to be as comfortable as we can. And we wonder why we have no growth.”
David Goggins Quotes on Hard work
1. “All I knew back then was hard work. The only way anything gets accomplished.”
2. “If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.”
3. “The hard part is getting to that point, because the ticket to victory often comes down to bringing your very best when you feel your worst.”
4. “It’s not supposed to be fun all the time, and that’s how you know you’re working hard.”
5. “What is in us.. We have no idea until we start trying hard. And I mean really trying hard.”
6. “My new norm is this isn’t always fun, it’s not always meant to be fun. And that’s when you know you’re trying hard.”
David Goggins Quotes on Laziness
1. “Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.”
2. “I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores.”
3. “The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet.”
4. “Analyze your schedule, kill your empty habits, burn out the bullshit, and see what’s left.”
5. “It’s so easy to be great nowadays my friend because most people are weak. Most people don’t want to go the extra mile because it sucks, it’s miserable and it’s lonely.”
6. “Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.”
7. “There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert.”
8. “Never let people who choose the path of least resistance steer you away from your chosen path of most resistance.”
9. “I thought I’d solved a problem when really I was creating new ones by taking the path of least resistance.”
10. “Believe it or not, most people prefer delusion. They blame others or bad luck or chaotic circumstance.”
11. “People need to have a purpose to get up.”
David Goggins Quotes on Overcoming Self
1. “Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.”
2. “This is what happens on the other side of overcoming. You become very very powerful when you overcome yourself.”
3. “My brain knew I gave it no way out, so we have to adapt and overcome.”
4. “Motivation is a crap. Motivation comes and goes. When you’re driven, whatever is in front of you will get destroyed.”
5. “The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”
6. “If you get up in the morning and don’t want to do something, you don’t care enough about yourself.”
7. “You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot’s seat, defeat is guaranteed.”
David Goggins Quotes on Success
1. “My whole thing now is I know how to think properly to be successful in all aspects of my life.”
2. “Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.”
3. “In my mind I’m that racehorse always chasing a carrot I’ll never catch, forever trying to prove myself to myself. And when you live that way and attain a goal, success feels anti-climactic.”
4. “I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.”
5. “When I lived in a $7 a month place when I was growing up for a short period of time, I loved it. I didn’t know any different. That was my norm. Once we moved out of that place, we moved to a $236 a month place, I was like sh*t, I never want to go back to that little piece of s***.”
David Goggins Quotes on Discipline
1. “It’s a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day.”
2. “It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.”
3. “It’s going to be hard work, discipline, and the non-cognitive skills – hard work, dedication, sacrifice – that will set you apart.”
4. “The reason I get up everyday even though there is no race or school or nothing in front of me is because I have pride in myself.”
5. “It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to put your ass on the line, in public, and work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away.”
6. “We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones.”
David Goggins Quotes on Suffering
1. “To grow in life, be willing to suffer.”
2. “Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.”
3. “My happiness is my reflection on the suffering during my journey and knowing that I never quit nor was I guided by anybody on this earth.”
4. “When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.”
5. “Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.”
6. “No one really finds themself without going through trials, tribulations, suffering and accountability.”
7. “I love God, but for a short period of time I became the devil because that was hell.
8. “I found peace on the opposite end of finding myself.”
David Goggins Quotes on Failure
1. “Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim.”
2. “In every failure there is something to be gained, even if it’s only practice for the next test you’ll have to take. Because that next test is coming. That’s a guarantee.”
3. “My mother was my biggest fan. Whenever I failed in life she was always asking me when and where I would go after it again. She never said, Well, maybe it isn’t meant to be.”
David Goggins Quotes on Self Confidence
1. “Be true to whoever or whatever you are, wear it like a badge of honor. Fit in with one person and one person only, yourself.”
2. “The hero is you.”
3. “If people can make up a mission statement, an ethos on which they want to live by and every morning you wake you and hold yourself accountable to that, that company is your own.”
4. “From the time you take your first breath, you become eligible to die. You also become eligible to find your greatness and become the one warrior.”
5. “When you think that you are done, you’re only 40% into what your body’s capable of doing. That’s just the limits that we put on ourselves.”
6. “It’s easier to accept the fact that you’re just not good enough. We all have a lot more than we think we have.”
These motivational David Goggins quotes inspire us to push our limits, overcome obstacles, and live life to the fullest.
Goggins aim is to encourage people to adopt resilience, self-discipline, and mental toughness for a deeper and fulfilling life.
Which of these David Goggins quotes is your favorite?
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