Having motivation is great, but even the most disciplined individuals need a bit of inspirational wisdom to kick-start their physical and mental training on days when motivation isn't enough to persevere. To help you fuel enthusiasm this month, keep these 100 tough quotes from some of the world's most influential people on tap.

Since 2015, Spartan founder and CEO Joe De Sena has had the honor of interviewing and learning from some of the smartest, toughest, most brilliant people in the world. Every week on the The Hard Way w/ Joe De Sena podcast, Joe receives bits of wisdom from a wide variety of extraordinarily accomplished experts. Their insight helps him — and all of the podcast's listeners — live a more fruitful, fulfilling, productive life.

We've curated the most notable quotes from the past decade Consider this your Tough Bible, to keep handy whenever you need a bit of added inspiration and motivation. It's been broken up by guest, and you can watch or listen to each guests' episode in its entirety if you want the full experience.

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The Tough Bible: 100 Bits of Invaluable Wisdom

Richard Branson on People

"Even people who have been written off by most people, there’s always something special you can find in other people. And life’s short, and the world is much smaller than one realizes, and you’re going to come across people time and time again in the most surprising places. And I’ve found out that, by hopefully never falling out with anybody, life’s that much more enjoyable."

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Mark Cuban on Goal Setting

"You want to achieve your goals, and that starts with finding something that you’re really good at and trying to be great at.”

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Arianna Huffington on Routine

“I need 8 hours of sleep. People need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep. They need to find out what is the optimum amount of time for them, unless you have a genetic mutation ... Then I work out, and then I get ready for my day, and when I’m fully recharged, I love my day. And for me. bringing that joy into my day is really key.”

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Wim Hof on the Power of the Mind

"It’s not only the cold. It could also be heat, could also be environmental stress in any way! Because stress is impact. Are we able to deal with that with our mind? Yes.”

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Sebastian Junger on Freedom

"The more comfort and safety you insist on, the less of your time will be available and, ultimately, the less free you will be. If you have to take a shower every day. you’ll never be able to spend the night in the woods."

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Dean Karnazes on Running

"I don’t think there’s been one time I’ve come back through the door after a run being worse off than before I started."

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Michael Easter on Discomfort

"Look at anything that improves a human: It often requires going through discomfort."

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Jon Levy on Relationships

"If I have a friend who’s obese, my probability [of being obese] increases by 45%. My friends who don’t even know them have a 20% increased chance, and their friends have a 5% increased chance. And this is true for happiness, marriage and divorce rates, smoking habits, voting habits — literally everything spreads through our relationships.”

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Naveen Jain on Nutrition 

"Our body is changing and adapting, and if we don’t adapt our nutrition and our food to that, it is going to harm you."

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Sarah Goldman on Participation 

"You can’t be a spectator. You’ve got to be involved."

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Jim Poole on the Brain

"Isolation, uncertainty, fear, stress, anxiety, depression, and worry: It’s all part of humanity ... It’s all about creating control and being able to liberate yourself from the sabotage of this reptilian midbrain."

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Lisa Tamati on Perseverance 

"Whether you’re an athlete or whether you’re dealing with a health journey or you’re wanting to achieve some great thing — it’s all the same principles of perseverance, of never quitting, of never backing down from a challenge, of not listening to the naysayers of the world, of finding mentors and people that will help you."

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Roderick Sewell on Happiness

"It’s a choice [to decide to be happy] ... It might not come when you need it, but if you continue and train your mind to understand that this is what it takes and this is the route that I need to go on, you’ll be surprised.”

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Frank Figliuzzi on Consistency

"In the middle of a crisis, it’s human nature to fight or flight, to go, 'Oh my god, I’ve never seen this crisis before. There must be a different way to handle this.’ That’s the wrong thing to do. Consistency means clinging to a battle rhythm in your life that will get you through everything. Stick with what got you. Stick with your core values.”

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Dr. Alan Desmond on Plant-Based Diets

"We should be pushing for a global switch to a diet that is completely or predominantly whole-food plant-based ... If we were to do this, we would prevent almost 12 million preventable deaths per year."

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Bryce Wylde on Heart Rate Variability 

"The more variable your heart beats, the more your brain thinks or feels that you’re not in distress. What do we do when we’re running? We develop that cadence, develop that rhythmic breathing purposely, and what does that do to heart rate variability? It reduces it."

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Rich Diviney on the 2-Minute Rule

"Resiliency is being able to bounce back to baseline. The two-minute rule said [if] anything bad happens, you have two minutes to mourn, kick the dirt, wallow, whatever. After that 120 seconds, get back to baseline, get back to what you were doing."

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Dr. Lara Pence on Resiliency 

"Resilience is not just to get back to where we were, but to fall and falter and struggle; to rebound with new wisdom and knowledge that actually propels you forward.”

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Gene Zannetti on the Prey Mindset

"When you see people fail, almost always it has to do with that prey mindset: looking around, not wanting to let people down, focusing too much on the outcome, focusing too much on external factors that are beyond their control."

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Clark Bartram on Finding the Answer

“We look for something outside of ourselves to be the answer to the problem that we’re facing. But really, the answer is within us.”

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Lindsay Dare Shoop on Finding Your Passion

“Part of figuring out what you want to do — and where you want to go, and who you want to be — is figuring out what you don’t want to do.”

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Mirna Valerio on Doing the Work

“Nothing is magic. There’s no hack to this. There’s no hack to being fit or healthy. You have to work at it.”

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Tyler Jack Harris on Ditching Your Safety Net

"The safety net is the most dangerous thing you can have. When you get to a place where there’s no contingency plan, those are the stories that everybody wants to see — when it has to work, when you have to do it. You don’t truly find out what you’re capable of until there isn’t a plan B.”

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Shay Eskew on Laughing at Yourself

"You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself. Don’t take life so seriously. Sometimes I’m [asked], 'Aren’t you ever serious?’ I am. There’s a time and a place for it.”

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Cindy Eckert on Competence

"It’s not about confidence, it’s about competence. I’d show up and I’d know my shit.”

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Adam Alter on Our Addiction to Our Phones

"For how much of the day can you reach your phone without moving your feet? About 80% of adults say that they can 24 hours a day, which basically means that for all intents and purposes, for function, it’s basically an implant.”

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Ryan Holiday on Controlling What You Can Control

"Our individual performance — the effort that we bring, the ideas that we bring, the passion that we bring, the work that we do — that’s up to us, but the external results are not up to us.”

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Dr. Mark McLaughlin on the Science of Quitting

"[Quitting] is an unfinished cycle. It’s unfinished neural circuitry that you’re laying down ... When you’re strengthening your mental toughness, you are basically creating a neural pathway, a network of cells that goes from A to B to C to D to E."

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Will Ahmed on When to Go Hard and When to Pull Back

“Most people are doing the same level of intensity [in their] workout every time they exercise, and that has huge problems. It has problems because when you’re run-down, it’s probably too hard. But on the flip side, when your body’s dialed — like when you’re ready, when you’ve got a green recovery, when your physiology looks good — you have to hit it hard, you’ve got to crush it, not do the same thing you always do.”

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C. T. Fletcher on Being Told He Was Going to Die

"All of a sudden, all those plans you make and all those things you still want to do are ripped away. And you think, in this instant 'Damn, I’m not gonna get to do any of that shit.' ... Everything is over right now. That’s kind of a scary thing ... especially when you want to do some more living, and all of a sudden it’s over. Every plan is cancelled, every event for the rest of your day is over. It’s a shock.”

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