Last Updated on September 6, 2024
Endurance athletes and followers of the sport are definitely aware of who has been considered by many as one of the toughest men out there. David Goggins has completed over 60 ultra-marathons, regularly placing in the top five at most of them.
He also completed 4,030 pull-ups in over 17 hours – a Guinness World Record holder during that time. David has accomplished all this despite health conditions that would have discouraged most people.
Who Is David Goggins?
Goggins started a career in the Air Force when he was 19 years old, aspiring to become a pararescueman. During his training, military doctors told him of his sickle cell anemia and he was given a way out. He instead became a tactical air controller until his exit from active duty service.
David got a job spraying for cockroaches upon his return to civilian life, and gained weight doing so. That was the time when he saw a Discovery channel documentary about Navy SEALS and Hell Week.
David decided to become a Navy SEAL, battling it out between the demands of training, his own bodily limits and, having to repeat training because of injuries. He got in eventually, earning his trident on Aug. 10, 2001. Goggins was mobilized for combat after 9/11, serving as a training instructor for other Navy SEALs.
In 2005, many SEALs were lost during Operation Red Wings, and a devastated Goggins wanted to find a way to help the families of the fallen operators. He found that the best way to do so was to raise enough money by running races.
Becoming everything you want to be is going to take not only hard work and mental toughness, but also discipline. Be inspired to live a driven life with these David Goggins quotes.
Inspirational David Goggins Quotes
1. “Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.” – David Goggins
2. “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?” – David Goggins
3. “As humans, we’re reading books everyday to try to figure out how to be someone else. What we don’t do is go inside, turn ourselves inside out, and read our own story. You have to look inside to find out what you really want.” – David Goggins
4. “You must recognize what you are about to do, highlight what you do not like about it, and spend time visualizing each and every obstacle you can.” – David Goggins
5. “We live in an external world. Everything, you have to see it, touch it. If you can for the rest of your life, live inside yourself – to find greatness, you have to go inside.” – David Goggins
6. “I tried to do so many things to fit in. But when you look in the mirror, that’s the one person you can’t lie to.” – David Goggins
7. “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.” – David Goggins
8. “It’s a lot more than mind over matter. It takes relentless self discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day.” – David Goggins
9. “If you have any mental toughness, if you have any fraction of self-discipline; The ability to not want to do it, but still do it; If you can get through to doing things that you hate to do: on the other side is greatness.” – David Goggins
10. “A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.” – David Goggins
11. “Refused to compromise who I was to conform to their unwritten rules.” – David Goggins
12. “Analyze your schedule, kill your empty habits, burn out the bullshit, and see what’s left.” – David Goggins
13. “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!” – David Goggins
14. “It’s possible to transcend anything that doesn’t kill you.” – David Goggins
15. “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.” – David Goggins
16. “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.” – David Goggins
17. “Breaking the shackles and stretching beyond our own perceived limits takes hard fucking work—oftentimes physical work—and when you put yourself on the line, self doubt and pain will greet you with a stinging combination that will buckle your knees.” – David Goggins
18. “It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to put your ass on the line, in public, and work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away. We all have eyeballs on us. Our family and friends are watching, and even if you’re surrounded by positive people, they will have ideas about who you are, what you’re good at, and how you should focus your energy. That shit is just human nature, and if you try to break out of their box you’ll get some unsolicited advice that has a way of smothering your aspirations if you let.” – David Goggins
19. “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. During Hell Week, the men who quit felt like they were running on a treadmill turned way the fuck up with no dashboard within reach. But, whether they ever figured it out or not, that was an illusion they fell for.” – David Goggins
20. “Having lived the life I’ve lived, and seeing the other side, not being afraid to attack what was in front of me has made me happy.” – David Goggins
21. “If you’re not physically and mentally prepared for what life is going to throw at you, then you’re just going to crumble, And then, you’re no good to nobody.” – David Goggins
22. “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.” – David Goggins
23. “Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance, and beautiful silence.” – David Goggins
24. “Suffering is the true test of life.” – David Goggins
25. “When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.” – David Goggins
26. “I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.” – David Goggins
27. “In every failure a lot of good things will have happened, and we must acknowledge them.” – David Goggins
28. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – David Goggins
29. “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.” – David Goggins
30. “Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.” – David Goggins
31. “Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim.” – David Goggins
32. “It’s so easy to be great nowadays, because everyone else is weak.” – David Goggins
33. “It’s okay, you might be called a nigger one day. It’s okay…Let them call you that. What are you going to do now? They don’t own your life. How you’re going to control that now?…Thicken your skin.” – David Goggins
34. “Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes. You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable.” – David Goggins
35. “Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callous your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what.” – David Goggins
36. “No one is going to come help you. No one’s coming to save you.” – David Goggins
37. “We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse.” – David Goggins
38. “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.” – David Goggins
39. “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.” – David Goggins
40. “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.” – David Goggins
41. “Back in the day, what motivated me was overcoming myself. Now I believe in being a leader. I’ve done it all – I’m good. Now, it’s about setting an example for others to follow. I can’t just talk it – I have to live it.” – David Goggins
42. “You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.” – David Goggins
43. “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.” – David Goggins
44. “Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize…” – David Goggins
45. “I don’t stop when I’m tired. I stop when I’m done.” – David Goggins
46. “Then I thought of an English middle-distance runner from back in the day named Roger Bannister. When Bannister was trying to break the four-minute mile in the 1950s, experts told him it couldn’t be done, but that didn’t stop him. He failed again and again, but he persevered, and when he ran his historic mile in 3:59.4 on May 6, 1954, he didn’t just break a record, he broke open the floodgates simply by proving it possible. Six weeks later, his record was eclipsed, and by now over 1,000 runners have done what was once thought to be beyond human capability.” – David Goggins
47. “Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.” – David Goggins
48. “I didn’t hang my head, because injuries happen. I’d given it everything I had and when you handle business like that, your effort will not go unnoticed.” – David Goggins
49. “In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” – David Goggins
50. “The only way we can change is to be real with ourselves.” – David Goggins
