These inspirational quotes are great for motivation with recovery and getting sober.
These motivational quotes are helpful in early recovery or as you are further along your path. They can provide comfort and support for anyone dealing with substance abuse or alcohol addiction.
It’s hard work to build a solid foundation for yourself while you are on a recovery journey – I hope the following quotes will be an inspiration to you!
1. “Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley
2. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
3. “I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.” – Charlotte Brontë
4. “Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.” – Carrie Fisher
5. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” – Muhammad Ali
6. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
7. “Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life.” –Brené Brown
8. “Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery.” – Mahatma Gandhi
9. “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” – Joseph Campbell
10. “The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand as what direction you are moving.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
11. “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe
12. “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking.” – Buddhist Proverb
13. “If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.” – Michael Jordan
14. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar
15. “Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest.” – Robert Downey Jr.
16. “It is 10 years since I used drugs or alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and, generally, a bright outlook… The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational.” – Russell Brand
17. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier
18. “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life; it comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives, and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” – John Wayne
19. “Don’t let the past steal your present.” – Cherríe L. Morga
20. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb
21. “Your best days are ahead of you. The movie starts when the guy gets sober and puts his life back together; it doesn’t end there.” – Bucky Sinister
22. “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
23. “I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake, and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.” – Samuel L. Jackson
24. “One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.” – Demi Lovato
25. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
26. “When you rise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ―Marcus Aurelius
27. “If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.” – Benjamin Alire Sáenz
28. “Once I was clear-headed, and I hadn’t been clear-headed in so long, I was like, I can never go back. And I’m still thankful.” – Travis Barker
29. “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
30. “I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: ‘Wait a minute – if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?’ And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.” ― Craig Ferguson
31. “I realized that I only had two choices: I was either going to die or I was going to live, and which one did I want to do? And then I said those words, ‘I’ll get help,’ or, ‘I need help. I’ll get help.’ And my life turned around. Ridiculous for a human being to take 16 years to say, ‘I need help.’” – Sir Elton John
32. “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis
33. “My recovery from drug addiction is the single greatest accomplishment of my life… but it takes work — hard, painful work — but the help is there, in every town and career, drug/drink freed members of society, from every single walk and talk of life to help and guide.” – Jamie Lee Curtis
34. ‘If it wasn’t for that rehab center, I probably wouldn’t have been here. In terms of recovery, it has been very important for me to be a part of a recovery community, to actively be around my people because they understand me. They get it.” – Macklemore
35. “No matter how dark the night may get, your light will never burn out.” – Jeanette LeBlanc
36. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
37. “We honor ourselves when we speak out for recovery. We show the world that recovery matters because it brings hope and peace into the lives of individuals and their loved ones.” – Beth Wilson
38. “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.” – Mahatma Gandhi
39. “I think that the power is in the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.” – Robert Downey Jr.
40. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
41. “Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again.” – Shane Niemeyer
42. “Rising from the ashes, I am born again, powerful, exultant, majestic through all the pain.” – Shannon Perry
43. “Sometimes you’ve just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.” – Dr. Phil McGraw
44. “If things go wrong, don’t go with them.” – Roger Babson
45. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” – Albert Camus
46. “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” – Confucius
47. “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
48. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
49. “If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.” – Mary Pickford
50. “Amazing how we can light tomorrow with today.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
51. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.” – Helen Keller