170 Best Struggle Quotes in Tough Times

Struggle Quotes – When you’re going through tough times, it can be helpful to read our latest collection of struggle quotes and sayings. These quotes can remind you that you’re not alone in your struggles and that other people have gone through similar experiences.

In life, we all face struggles. Whether it’s struggling with our own demons, or fighting against external forces, we all have to face difficulties at some point in our lives. Some may be big, some may be small, but they are all a part of life. It’s how we deal with these struggles that define us as people.

There are many ways to deal with struggles. Some people try to ignore them, while others face them head on. No matter what approach you take, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone in your struggles.

It’s during these difficult moments that we often turn to quotes for inspiration and motivation. Read some of the best struggle quotes with joyful lists to help you get through tough times. Don’t forget to check out our quotes about life and struggles too. Now time for the best struggle quotes.

Struggle to success quotes

A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. — Orison Swett Marden

You have to believe that you are the one who creates your success, that you are the one who creates your mediocrity, and that you are the one creating your struggle around money and success. — T. Harv Eker

If you’re absent during my struggle, don’t expect to be present during my success. — Will Smith

The battle of life is, in most cases, fought uphill; and to win it without a struggle were perhaps to win it without honor. If there were no difficulties there would be no success; if there were nothing to struggle for, there would be nothing to be achieved. — Samuel Smiles

struggle quotes on success 1
  • Save

Success is sweet and sweeter if long delayed and gotten through many struggles and defeats. — Amos Bronson Alcott

Always remember that striving and struggle precede success even in the dictionary. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If you give up at the first sign of struggle, you’re really not ready to be successful. — Kevin Hart

The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. — Helen Keller

But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you’re fighting for. — Paulo Coelho

Struggle quotes short

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. — Gautama Buddha

We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. — John Steinbeck

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. — Rosa Luxemburg

Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret. — Benjamin Disraeli

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. — Napoleon Hill

struggle quotes short 2
  • Save

There is scarcely any passion without struggle. — Albert Camus

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength. — Oprah Winfrey

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought. — Napoleon Hill

The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. — Pierre de Coubertin

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass

short struggle quotes to fight 3
  • Save

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is. — Robert H. Schuller

The fight life, that was easy. This is a battle I have every day. — Oscar De La Hoya

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s a struggle for every young Black man. You know how it is, only God can judge us. — Tupac Shakur

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle. — George Orwell

Beautiful struggle quotes

When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure. — Peter Marshall

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so, we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

The life of man is a struggle on earth. But without a cross, without a struggle, we get nowhere. The victory will be ours if we continue our efforts courageously, even when at times they appear futile. — Boniface Wimmer

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up. — James A. Baldwin

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure…you are above everything distressing. — Baruch Spinoza

beautiful struggle quotes 4
  • Save

When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself. — Deepak Chopra

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle. — William Osler

It is in struggle and service with our brothers and sisters, individually and collectively, that we find the meaning of life. — Jesse Jackson

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. — Cesar Chavez

Work and struggle and never accept an evil that you can change. — Andre Gide

Emotional struggle quotes

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Never underestimate the pain of a person, because in all honesty, everyone is struggling. Some people are better at hiding it than others. — Will Smith

Struggles make you stronger and the changes make you wiser and happiness has its own way of taking its sweet time. Life isn’t always lovely, but it’s a beautiful ride. — Gary Allan

Don’t expect anyone to give you anything. If you really believe in something, then fight for it. — Damon Dash

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

emotional struggle quotes 5
  • Save

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering. — Theodore Roosevelt

The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. — Steven Furtick

I find my own pain and others difficult to tolerate, so I always want to try to shift things so they’ll be better. But in doing that, if I am coming from a place of ego, I often cause harm. So, it’s a struggle for me to set my ego outside and find a softer and more compassionate way of approaching things. — Danny Boyle

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. — Edmund Burke

Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm. Rest in a mind like vast sky. — Gautama Buddha

Everyone has their own struggles quotes

The last great struggle for our rights; the battle for our own civilization, is entirely with ourselves, and the problem is to be solved by us. — William Wells Brown

All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today. — Pope Paul VI

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. — Albert Camus

Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. — Swami Vivekananda

Once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation. — Tennessee Williams

everyone has their own struggles quotes 6
  • Save

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

It is the cells which create and maintain in us, during the span of our lives, our will to live and survive, to search and experiment, and to struggle. — Albert Claude

Nothing is given to man on earth – struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible – the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen. — Andrew Bernstein

Who struggles can fail. Who doesn’t struggle has already failed! — Bertolt Brecht

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. — Abraham Lincoln

Struggle captions

Quietly endure, silently suffer and patiently wait. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. — Confucius

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. — Frederick Douglass

Man has become great through struggle. — struggle quotes by Adolf Hitler

No smile is as beautiful as the one that struggles through tears. — Helen Keller

There’s no satisfaction without a struggle first. — Marty Liquori

Life’s a climb. But the view is great. — struggle quotes by Miley Cyrus

The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. — Blaise Pascal

Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness. — Shoshana Zuboff

Life is a beautiful struggle. — Talib Kweli

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world. — Franz Kafka

All art is the struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous. — Iris Murdoch

The perpetual struggle for room and food. — Thomas Malthus

What is life without a good struggle? ― Avijeet Das

Our struggles make us the Man or Woman we can be proud of! ― Avijeet Das

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. — Mahatma Gandhi

The struggle for freedom and justice is now. — John Legend

If there’s no struggle, there’s no progress. — Frederick Douglass

Struggle for freedom quotes

Struggle for freedom. Where people are denied the right of choice, recourse to such struggle is the only means of achieving their liberties. — John F. Kennedy

Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days. — Nelson Mandela

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. — Mahatma Gandhi

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature. — Swami Vivekananda

Everything that we perceive around us is struggling towards freedom, from the atom to the man, from the insentient, lifeless particle of matter to the highest existence on earth, the human soul. The whole universe is in fact the result of this struggle for freedom. — Swami Vivekananda

Celtic Tiger portrays the oppression of a people and the tiger symbolises the awakening of their Spirit and their struggle for freedom. — Michael Flatley

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. — Frederick Douglass

The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. — Ludwig von Mises

The struggle for freedom is not the struggle of the many against the few, but of minorities, sometimes of a minority of but one man gainst the majority. — Ludwig von Mises

As Americans, we can take enormous pride in the fact that courage has been inspired by our own struggle for freedom, by the tradition of democratic law secured by our forefathers and enshrined in our Constitution. It is a tradition that says all men are created equal under the law and that no one is above it. — Barack Obama

Thought-provoking struggle quotes

It takes a lot more courage to let something go than it does to hang on to it, trying to make it better. Letting go doesn’t mean ignoring a situation. Letting go means accepting what is, exactly as it is, without fear, resistance, or a struggle for control. — Iyanla Vanzant

For better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory. — Mahatma Gandhi

I do not believe in a simplistic and inflammatory view of good and evil. I believe this is a big world full of men, women, and children who struggle to eat, to love, to work, to protect their families, their beliefs, and their dreams. — Sean Penn

Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So, let us celebrate the struggle! — Stevie Wonder

Unfortunately, this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh. — Martin Bormann

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. — Rudyard Kipling

Just as the constant increase of entropy is the basic law of the universe, so it is the basic law of life to be ever more highly structured and to struggle against entropy. — Vaclav Havel

Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation. — Coretta Scott King

Struggling for existence quotes

It is impressive to see a person who has been battered by life in many ways, who is torn by a variety of unsolved problems, who may be alienated from many aspects of the self-but who is still fighting, still struggling, still striving to find the path to a fulfilling existence, moved by the wisdom of knowing, “I am more than my problems.” — Nathaniel Branden

The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there’s a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding – that existence is a struggle. — Harvey Keitel

Man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a social animal. — Albert Einstein

Life to the great majority is only a constant struggle for mere existence, with the certainty of losing it at last. — Arthur Schopenhauer

We will now discuss in a little more detail the struggle for existence. — struggle quotes by Charles Darwin

High romanticism shows you nature in all its harsh and lovely metamorphoses. Flood, fire and quake fling us back to the primal struggle for survival and reveal our gross dependency on mammoth, still mysterious forces. — Camille Paglia

The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates. — Frans de Waal

Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die. — Xunzi

Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter. — Henri Nouwen

Struggle quotes and sayings

We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains – chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment – in a word, circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain. — Mark Twain

Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hard work. It doesn’t come before. — struggle quotes by Shelby Steele

Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us. — William Kunstler

The brain struggling to understand the brain is society trying to explain itself. — struggle quotes by Colin Blakemore

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. — Frederick Douglass

They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. — Frederick Douglass

When you struggle to reach for something you don’t know, that’s where most of the interesting stuff is. — Herbie Hancock

Sweet it is, when on the high seas the winds are lashing the waters, to gaze from the land on another’s struggles. — struggle quotes by Lucretius

Struggle is strengthening. Battling with evil gives us the power to battle evil even more. — struggle quotes by Ossie Davis

Lack of communication, the refusal of some to understand, or outright refusal to learn about other human beings is based on fear. Fear is what keeps people apart. — Piri Thomas

Struggle to survival quotes

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. — Charles Darwin

Women are necessarily capable of almost anything in their struggle for survival and can scarcely be convicted of such man-made crimes as cruelty. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. — Viktor E. Frankl

This survival of the fittest which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called “natural selection”, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. — Herbert Spencer

Flat fields produce mediocre grapes, but rolling hills produce the greatest grapes. Why? Because the vines must struggle for survival. — Billy Cannon

All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. — Henri Nouwen

America faces a fundamental choice: either the blessings of liberty or the servitude of liberalism. In the political struggle for survival, one or the other is headed for extinction. — Nancy Pearcey

The next struggle will be a struggle for survival and it will not just be limited to Black people or Black against white, but it will be the poor people, the masses of the people of the country, struggling for the right to live or the right to survive. — Robert F. Williams

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn’t it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another’s prospects of survival at the cost of their own? — Peter Singer

Struggling to survive quotes

The story of Pakistan, its struggle and its achievement, is the very story of great human ideals, struggling to survive in the face of great odds and difficulties. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Freedom means more than just struggling to survive. — Lisa M

Democracy holds little appeal for people who are struggling to survive. — Paul Kagame

To put things back into perspective, back when we as people were struggling to survive through winters, or even through the night. I feel like there’s a lot of whining about whether or not you use Asian or the words Asian or Oriental, and how it’s going to offend somebody. — Maynard James Keenan

Jealousy, which serves the struggle for survival, can deteriorate into the envy which draws defeat even from victory. — Willard Gaylin

Many of these Americans who are struggling to survive are Americans of color. Their cries for assistance confront America with a test of our moral compass as a nation. — Elijah Cummings

The full extent of the problem of hunger is not obvious to most of us. We see the homeless, but there are a great number of working poor, struggling to survive, who don’t have enough money to put adequate food on the table. — Scott Glenn

Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival. — Ludwig von Mises

There’s no moral issue for me. I did the best science I could. I was struggling to survive and didn’t have the luxury of being a moral creature. — Howard Moskowitz

Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive. — Jack Donovan

Struggle is real quotes by Nicole Unice

So often, we struggle against invisible forces that we have not looked at or named. We only see the struggle; we don’t see its source. — struggle quotes

Understanding what you bring to your family system helps shape your understanding of the particular joys and struggles you remember and understanding your own temperament impacts the way you move forward with relationships today.

If you want to get a different result out of life than you are currently getting, you are going to have to suspend your own understanding of reality for a time.

Our awareness shifts from the world around us to the world we’ve created. Over time, it becomes dangerous to live only within the world we’ve created on a personal-sized screen.

Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity.

The struggle is about something much deeper than the everyday challenges. It’s about the disconnect between what I believe and how I act. — struggle quotes

The painful confusion that transitions and endings bring will always challenge our ability to live into our new stories. Transitions shake our foundation, testing its integrity.

We forget that our struggle is real and that our struggle is good. But we don’t need to stay there. Seeking more for our lives starts with one crucial question. — struggle quotes

Think the vitality of our souls is at risk when we give in to the temptation to live a superficial existence, to flee from the painful moments and difficult questions that often create meaning.

Living day to day in the topsoil of our souls will create shallow roots that cannot sustain us when the inevitable seasons of transition and grief plow into our lives.

Quotes for someone struggling

Thus, the struggle for peace includes the struggle for freedom and justice for the masses of all countries. — Arthur Henderson

As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality – where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I am known for a life spent in the struggle for freedom, and freedom includes the freedom of religion. — Oriana Fallaci

We struggle with the complexities and avoid the simplicities. — struggle quotes by Norman Vincent Peale

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin. — Mother Teresa

Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. — struggle quotes by Og Mandino

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. — Sigmund Freud

The most difficult thing for spiritual seekers to do is to stop struggling, striving, seeking, and searching. Why? Because in the absence of struggle you don’t know who you are; you lose your boundaries, you lose your separateness, you lose your specialness, you lose the dream you have lived all your life. — Adyashanti

We grow because we struggle, we learn and overcome. —struggle quotes by Robert G. Allen

Struggle and misery quotes

All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. The law of life. No sense in battling against it. — R.K. Narayan

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The struggle to determine whether “we, the people” is a moral compact embedded in a political contract or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others. — Bill Moyers

Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. — Eugene B. Sledge

Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile. — struggle quotes by John Steinbeck

The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous. — Lillian Hellman

In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity. — Fritjof Capra

More struggle quotes to embrace your feeling

But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival. — Adrienne Rich

The work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should happened because it did, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. — Byron Katie

Don’t feel entitled to anything you didn’t sweat and struggle for. — Marian Wright Edelman

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Work hard for what you want because it won’t come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticises you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive. — Leah LaBelle

If you fight you won’t always win. But if you don’t fight you will always lose. — Bob Crow

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. — Wendy Mass

Folks don’t give themselves enough credit. The mother who endures cavities so her children can get braces. The father who works a dead-end job so his kids can have a roof over their heads. The daughter who sacrifices college so she can take care of her disabled mother. They are all heroes, and don’t you believe otherwise. ― Ray Smith

These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge. — Al Gore

The happiness we seek cannot be found through grasping, trying to hold on to things. It cannot be found through getting serious and uptight about wanting things to go in the direction we think will bring happiness. We are always taking hold of the wrong end of the stick. The point is that the happiness we seek is already here and it will be found through relaxation and letting go rather than through struggle. — Pema Chodron

Final thought

No matter what you’re going through in life, there’s always someone who has gone through something similar. It is not something to be ashamed of, but something to embrace. That’s why these struggle quotes resonate with so many people. They provide comfort and remind us that we’re not alone in our struggles.

And, allow these ‘170 inspirational struggle quotes and sayings’ to help you to maintain hope and to keep moving forward even when things seem impossible. So don’t give up when things get tough – use your struggles as motivation to succeed.

Read also: fear of failure quotes | sorrow and joy quotes | life lesson quotes | mental toughness quotes.

Leave a Comment

Share via
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap