Top 207 Quotes & Sayings by Jon Gordon

The goal in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at your final destination as late as possible, with a smile on your face.

Thoughts are magnetic. What we think about we attract.

Purpose is the ultimate fuel for our journey through life. When we drive with purpose we don't get tired or bored and our engines don't burn out.

My life is a gift not an obligation and I Get To make the most of it.

Don't let negative people drain your energy. Focus on your positive energy and kill them with kindness. Energy vampires are no match for your positive energy.

When you believe, the impossible becomes possible. What you believe will become what is true. Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow. Don’t look at your challenges; look up and look out into the future. Don’t focus on your circumstances. Focus on the right beliefs that will help you build your success.

Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow.

You need to work as hard to be a great teammate as you do to be a great player

Negative thoughts are the nails that build a prison of failure.

The secret to life and the greatest success strategy of all is to love all of it and fear none of it.

I have worked in the homes of many successful people and have seen firsthand that everyone fails in life, but failure can be a gift if you don't give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it. You see, failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroads on the journey of your life. It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and a dedication. Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?

No challenge can stop you if you have the courage to keep moving forward in the face of your greatest fears and biggest challenges. Be courageous.

Only through service and sacrifice can you become great.

It's not easy to deal with the negativity in the world but it's something that's got to be done. Your success and life are so important that you must surround yourself with a positive support team.

Anyone who attempts to build great things will face challenges.

Instead of being disappointed about where you are, be optimistic about where you are going.

Don't chase success. Decide to make a difference and success will find you.

We often have to lose what we thought we wanted to find what God wants for us

I just lucked into a lot of good people man. In my life and through friends, and in the music, that really embraced me and took care of me. I'm a lucky guy.

Every person and every team will be tested on their journey. It is part of the curriculum of life. It's just like riding a bicycle. In the beginning you're going to fall off and get knocked down but the important thing is to get back on, stay strong, and after a while once you master it you'll ride with the confidence of a champion.

If you think your best days are behind you, they are. If you think your best days are ahead of you, they are.

Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold.

Leadership is not just about what you do but what you can inspire, encourage and empower others to do.

Great leaders don't succeed because they are great. They succeed because they bring out the greatness in others.

The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is names after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions.

A man goes to the village to visit the wise man and he says to the wise man, “I feel like there are two dogs inside me. One dog is this positive, loving, kind, and gentle dog and then I have this angry, mean-spirited, and negative dog and they fight all the time. I don't know which is going to win.” The wise man thinks for a moment and he says, “I know which is going to win. The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog.

Remember, you have only one ride through life so give it all you got and enjoy the ride.

When you fuel up with purpose you find the excitement in the mundane, the passion in the everyday, the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Adversity is not a dead end but a detour to a better outcome than you can imagine!

I got to perform the [Jaques] Ibert Concertino Da Camera with a brilliant pianist at school named Chunga. I got to perform the [Alexander] Glazunov Concerto in senior year with our school orchestra and the Jewish Grossman orchestra. I won a scholarship from the Goldman band to perform the [Paul] Creston Concerto. Which I never played with them, but they still gave me the money.

Challenges ONLY make you STRONGER!!!

Everyone wants to do what the great ones do; but very few are willing to do what they did to become great

Failure is not meant to be final and fatal.... It is meant to refine you to be all that you are meant to be.

You are not a true success unless you are helping others be successful.

The only person who can limit your possibilities is you.

A tenor player named Bud Revels there at the time. A lot of really nice associations amongst the students. Garry Dial was a returning student. He actually got me on Red Rodney's band subbing a little bit. I gigged some with Red when I was 21 in 1988. So I had a lot of nice associations that came from [ Laguardia School of Arts]. But a lot of my education was going on in the clubs. Hearing music and sitting in.

If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want.

I don't want my children to be what I want them to be. I want them to become everything God created them to be.

Love takes time. It's a process not a goal. Love is something that needs to be nurtured. But if there is one thing I urge you to start immediately it's focus on bringing out the best in each person on your team. When you love someone you want the best for him. You want him to shine. And the best way to do this is to help him discover the value inside him.

Life and success are about what you choose to believe.

Letting people share their gifts and strengths is real love.

Phil [Wood] said to me in the car going back, he said, "Look man, you better know why you're playing this music. Because I've known too many who lived and died for it. And if you're not trying to change the world, I'm not interested."

Everybody wants the quick fix, but it doesn't happen overnight. You have to be willing to put it out there. I call it 'the secret to being an overnight success,' which means there really isn't a such thing as an overnight success. ! The secret is you work really hard for 10 years, and then you become an overnight success.

The goal is not to be better than anyone else but rather be better than you were yesterday.

Being positive won’t guarantee you’ll succeed. But being negative will guarantee you won’t.

Positivity is like a boomerang. The more we put it out there, the more it comes back to us.

Optimism is a competitive advantage.

You can’t be a great leader if all you are serving is yourself.

A true leader doesn't lead to gain power. They lead to empower and give power away.

Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you.

Love the process and you’ll love what the process produces.

The more energy you spend worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus, the less you will have for the people who are on your bus. And if you are worrying about the people who didn't get on your bus you won't have the energy to keep on asking new people to get on.

Love is the answer for the team's success.

There's a story about when President Lyndon Johnson visited NASA and as he was walking the halls he came across a janitor who was cleaning up a storm, like the Energizer bunny with a mop in his hand. The president walked over to the janitor and told him he was the best janitor he has ever seen and the janitor replied, "Sir, I'm not just a janitor, I helped put a man on the moon." See, even though he was cleaning floors he had a bigger purpose and vision for his life. This is what kept him going and helped him excel in his job.

By the latter part of high school, by the middle of junior year in high school, Jay Rodriguez played me some Irakere records that that Paquito [D'Rivera] was on. And he also played me and our friend, Curtis Haywood, some Phil Woods records. And when I heard Phil, I just about lost my mind. I was playing the Charlie Parker Omnibook as part of my lessons. This was the '80s. There was no YouTube and all that. And we had three or four jazz records at that point.

Successful people do ordinary things with extraordinary consistency, commitment and focus.

So often the difference between success and failure is belief. Belief leads to action and execution.

One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.

Don't waste your energy on those who don't get on your bus.

Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.