60 Quotes by David Goggins
David Goggins, a living testament to the power of relentless determination, has transcended physical and mental limitations to become an inspirational figure in the world of athletics and personal growth. His journey from a challenging childhood marked by poverty and adversity to becoming a Navy SEAL, ultramarathon runner, and motivational speaker is a testament to his unyielding willpower.
Goggins has completed grueling feats like the Badwater Ultramarathon and the Navy SEAL Hell Week multiple times, showcasing his ability to conquer pain, doubt, and fear. Through his autobiography "Can't Hurt Me," he shares his philosophy of embracing suffering to unlock one's full potential, igniting a movement of individuals striving to break through their own barriers. Goggins' story is a reminder that the human spirit's capacity for resilience knows no bounds.
David Goggins Quotes
"We live in a world where a lot of people need goals, motivation, and a lot of other words to get started. It’s just a big excuse." (Meaning)
"Life is one big tug of war between mediocrity and trying to find your best self." (Quote Meaning)
"You will never learn from people if you always tap dance around the truth." (Meaning)
"In order for me to be the person that I wanted to become, I saw myself as the weakest person that God ever created." (Quote Meaning)
"At the end of the day, hard work may not be enough. You still may fail. But you keep going out there and go after it." (Meaning)
"The worst thing that can happen to a man is to become civilized." (Quote Meaning)
"It’s so easy to be great nowadays because everyone else is weak." (Meaning)
"The mind has a tactical advantage over you at all times." (Quote Meaning)
"The only thing more contagious than a good attitude is a bad one." (Meaning)
“Everybody comes to a point in their life when they want to quit. But it's what you do at that moment that determines who you are.”
“It hurts, but that’s all it does. The most difficult part of the training is training your mind. You build calluses on your feet to endure the road. You build calluses on your mind to endure the pain. There’s only one way to do that. You have to get out there and run.”
“Failure is an option. It's what you do with the failure that makes you who you are. Our failures mold us. I have failed at several things in my life. What sets some of us apart, is that when we fail, we can't sleep at night. It haunts us until we have our time at redemption.”
“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.”
“If you can see yourself doing something, you can do it. If you can’t see yourself doing it, usually you can’t achieve it.”
"You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.” (Meaning)
"Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. 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.” (Quote Meaning)
"It won’t always go your way, so you can’t get trapped in this idea that just because you’ve imagined a possibility for yourself that you somehow deserve it. 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!”
"In the military, we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training,”
"No one is going to come to help you. No one's coming to save you.”
"It's a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day.”
"I thought I’d solved a problem when really I was creating new ones by taking the path of least resistance.”
"We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.” (Meaning)
"Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.” (Meaning)
"The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”
"We live in a world with a lot of insecure, jealous people. Some of them are our best friends. They are blood relatives. Failure terrifies them. So does our success. Because when we transcend what we once thought possible, push our limits, and become more, our light reflects off all the walls they’ve built up around them. Your light enables them to see the contours of their own prison, their own self-limitations. But if they are truly the great people you always believed them to be, their jealousy will evolve, and soon their imagination might hop its fence, and it will be their turn to change for the better.”
"Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're fucking nuts.”
"Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end.”
"Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize, so you don’t die a fucking pussy.”
"From then on, I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort. If it was raining, I would go run. Whenever it started snowing, my mind would say, Get your fucking running shoes on. Sometimes I wussed out and had to deal with it at the Accountability Mirror. But facing that mirror, facing myself, motivated me to fight through uncomfortable experiences, and, as a result, I became tougher. And being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals.”
"Don’t stop when you’re tired. Stop when you’re done." (Quote Meaning)
"The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss.”
"Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire back in the fifth century BC, had it right when he wrote about men on the battlefield. “Out of every one hundred men,” he wrote, “ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior…”
"We all need small sparks, small accomplishments in our lives to fuel the big ones. Think of your small accomplishments as kindling. When you want a bonfire, you don’t start by lighting a big log. You collect some witch’s hair—a small pile of hay or some dry, dead grass. You light that, and then add small sticks and bigger sticks before you feed your tree stump into the blaze. Because it’s the small sparks, which start small fires, that eventually build enough heat to burn the whole fucking forest down.”
"Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance, and beautiful silence.”
"The reason it’s important to push hardest when you want to quit the most is because it helps you callous your mind. It’s the same reason why you have to do your best work when you are the least motivated. That’s why I loved PT in BUD/S and why I still love it today. Physical challenges strengthen my mind so I’m ready for whatever life throws at me, and it will do the same for you.”
"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.”
"When you think that you are done, you're only 40% in to what your body's capable of doing. That's just the limits that we put on ourselves.”
"You are giving up instead of getting hard! Tell the truth about the real reasons for your limitations and you will turn that negativity, which is real, into jet fuel. Those odds stacked against you will become a damn runway!”
"Always be willing to embrace ignorance and become the dumb fuck in the classroom again, because that is the only way to expand your body of knowledge and body of work. It’s the only way to expand your mind.”
"If you want to be one of the few to defy those trends in our ever-softening society, you will have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity, which requires an open mind.”
"The confidence I’d managed to develop didn’t come from a perfect family or God-given talent. It came from personal accountability which brought me self-respect, and self-respect will always light a way forward.”
"It’s possible to transcend anything that doesn’t kill you” (Meaning)
"The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself. You wake up with them, you walk around with them, you go to bed with them, and eventually, you act on them. Whether they be good or bad. We are all our own worst haters and doubters because self-doubt is a natural reaction to any bold attempt to change your life for the better. You can’t stop it from blooming in your brain, but you can neutralize it, and all the other external chatter by asking, What if?”
"Analyze your schedule, kill your empty habits, burn out the bullshit, and see what’s left.”
"The Buddha famously said that life is suffering. I’m not a Buddhist, but I know what he meant and so do you. To exist in this world, we must contend with humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. That’s just nature. Each specific life comes with its own personalized portion of pain. It’s coming for you. You can’t stop it. And you know it.”
"Every minute you spend feeling sorry for yourself is another minute not getting better, another morning you miss at the gym, another evening wasted without studying. Another day burned when you didn’t make any progress toward your dreams, ambitions, and deepest desires. The ones you’ve had in your head and heart your entire life.”
"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.”
"Anyone who is of sound mind and body can sit down and think of twenty things in their life that could have gone differently. Where maybe they didn’t get a fair shake and where they took the path of least resistance. If you’re one of the few who acknowledge that, want to callous those wounds, and strengthen your character, it's up to you to go back through your past and make peace with yourself by facing those incidents and all of your negative influences and accepting them as weak spots in your own character. Only when you identify and accept your weaknesses will you finally stop running from your past. Then those incidents can be used more efficiently as fuel to become better and grow stronger.”
"You are stopping you, you are giving up instead of getting hard.”
"You know that my refrigerator is never full, and it never will be because I live a mission-driven life, always on the hunt for the next challenge. That mindset is the reason I broke that record, finished Badwater, became a SEAL, rocked Ranger School, and on down the list. 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.”
"The human body can withstand and accomplish a hell of a lot more than most of us think possible, and that it all begins and ends in the mind.”
"You can be born in a fucking sewer and still be the baddest motherfucker on earth.”
"There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better.”
"A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. Who would rather treat the pain of our wounds and prevent further injury than help us callous over them and try again. We need to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but at the same time not make us feel we’re up against the impossible.”
"But you don’t have to let your doubt into the cockpit! You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot’s seat, defeat is guaranteed. Remembering that you’ve been through difficulties before and have always survived to fight again shifts the conversation in your head. It will allow you to control and manage doubt, and keep you focused on taking each and every step necessary to achieve the task at hand.”
"You cannot be afraid to disappoint people. You have to live the life you want to live. Sometimes, that means being the motherfucker who can put a middle finger up to everyone in the room and be totally comfortable with that.”
"But what put distance between me and almost everybody else in that platoon is that I didn’t let my desire for comfort rule me.”
"No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is too dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. Yes, we need to celebrate our victories. There’s power in victory that’s transformative, but after our celebration, we should dial it down, dream up new training regimens, new goals, and start at zero the very next day.”
"No matter who you are, who your parents are or were, where you live, what you do for a living, or how much money you have, you’re probably living at about 40 percent of your true capability.”
"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! I”
"Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim.”
"This life is all a fucking mind game. Realize that. Own it!”
"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.”
"It may be satisfactory, but that's another word for mediocrity.” (Meaning)
"And if you fail again, so the fuck be it. Take the pain. Repeat these steps and keep fighting.”
"I’m haunted by my future goals, not my past failures. I’m haunted by what I may still become. I’m haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution.”
"What if is an exquisite fuck-you to anyone who has ever doubted your greatness or stood in your way. It silences negativity. It’s a reminder that you don’t really know what you’re capable of until you put everything you’ve got on the line. It makes the”
"A true leader stays exhausted, abhors arrogance, and never looks down on the weakest link. He fights for his men and leads by example. That’s what it meant to be uncommon among uncommon. It meant being one of the best and helping your men find their best too.”
"I understand the temptation to sell short, but I also know that impulse is driven by your mind’s desire for comfort, and it’s not telling you the truth.”
"But visualization isn’t simply about daydreaming of some trophy ceremony—real or metaphorical. You must also visualize the challenges that are likely to arise and determine how you will attack those problems when they do. That way you can be as prepared as possible on the journey.”
"Everything in life is a mind game! Whenever we get swept under by life’s dramas, large and small, we are forgetting that no matter how bad the pain gets, no matter how harrowing the torture, all bad things end. That forgetting happens the second we give control over our emotions and actions to other people, which can easily happen when pain is peaking.”
"From this point forward, accept the following as Goggins’ laws of nature: You will be made fun of. You will feel insecure. You may not be the best all the time. You may be the only black, white, Asian, Latino, female, male, gay, lesbian or [fill in your identity here] in a given situation. There will be times when you feel alone. Get over it!”
"Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. 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.”
― David Goggins Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
