51 Inspiring Nonfiction Quotes

Welcome to a journey through the powerful world of nonfiction, where real stories and profound insights inspire us daily. In this curated collection, you'll find 51 thought-provoking quotes that capture the essence of human experience, offering wisdom, motivation, and perspective. Whether it's a gentle push towards personal growth or a deep reflection on society, these quotes serve as a reminder of the transformative power of words. Dive in and let these nuggets of nonfiction wisdom illuminate your path and spark your inspiration.

1. “The story you are about to read is a work of fiction. Nothing - and everything - about it is real.” - Todd Strasser

2. “Education...has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” - George Macaulay Trevelyan

3. “Friendship is greater than the colonial and dominating race ideologies of hundreds of years." -"Some of My Best Friends” - Luis Rodriguez

4. “The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...” - Bruno Bettelheim

5. “But my way of writing is rather to think aloud, and follow my own humours, than much to consider who is listening to me; and, if I stop to consider what is proper to be said to this or that person, I shall soon come to doubt whether any part at all is proper.” - Thomas De Quincey

6. “I know a lot of people were praying for us to find the arsenic.” - Jeannie Walker

7. “Poetry is a way of coming to know the realness of things; fiction is a way of coming to know the world of relationships; nonfiction is a way of coming to know the world of the mind.” - Kelly Cherry

8. “I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it. ” - Loung Ung

9. “On previous trips the pirates have stolen valuables, killed people, raped and abducted girls...the women work frantically to ugly themselves up by smearing black charcoal paste on their faces and bodies. With ashen faces, some of the younger, prettier girls reach into the bags we have vomited into and scoop out handfuls of it to smear on their hair and clothes. ” - Loung Ung

10. “Each of us is a book waiting to be written, and that book, if written, results in a person explained.” - Thomas M. Cirignano

11. “Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them. ” - Ishmael Beah

12. “When he was very excited, [John Singer] Sargent would rush at his canvas with his brush poised for attack, yelling, 'Demons, demons, demons!' When he was particularly angry or frustrated, he expressed these feelings with 'Damn,' the only curse he allowed himself. He once had the expletive inscribed on a rubber stamp so he could have the satisfaction of pounding it on a piece of paper.” - Deborah Davis

13. “Curiously, anatomical reality in art was apparently a horrifying concept to the same men and women who lined up to see bodies at the morgue. ” - Deborah Davis

14. “There was however, a group of 507 individuals who were permanent street dwellers [in Miami.] These 507 were not indigent, down-on-their-luck families. They were single people and every one of them was mentally ill. ” - Pete Earley

15. “Many of the members of the class had never held ice. ” - Dave Eggers

16. “At mealtime a very broad cloth is laid on the trestle table in the solar. to facilitate service, places are set along one side only. On that side the cloth falls to the floor, doubling as a communal napkin...there are several kinds of knives...but no forks.” - Joseph Gies

17. “...beggars were permitted to enter great houses and solicit directly from the table, but now they are restricted to the doorstep. ” - Joseph Gies

18. “As the baby grows bigger, she [wet nurse] will chew his meat for him.” - Joseph Gies

19. “Instrumental keys [on organs], introduced in the twelfth century, are so heavy and stiff that they must be played with clenched fists. ” - Joseph Gies

20. “Across the bottom of the last page of many a book is written 'Explicit, Deo Gratias ('Finished, thank god')...Books are kept not on open shelves, but in locked chests. ” - Joseph Gies

21. “No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.” - Kurt Vonnegut

22. “I’m playing catch with Nisha and Nena. They’re standing against the opposite wall shrieking with enjoyment. They’re teenagers, but they’ve never played catch before and lack any sense of coordination; when they throw the ball to me it flies in any direction. Sometimes it hits the wall behind them. We’ve been playing for half an hour and they have only caught it twice.” - Louise Brown

23. “Another of them died last night. His body was in the bazaar this morning. It lay, with a collecting bowl at its feet, on the charpoy that is reserved for those who die without money or family to bury them. He looked desiccated and his skin had the sheen and color of the dates we eat to break our fast. There are new bodies on that charpoy every week. ” - Louise Brown

24. “a raped girl is bad for the family: it shows that they can’t protect their women; that they have little social standing; and that they’re not respectable. It’s worse for the victim because once a woman, or a girl—or a boy—is known as the target of a rape she becomes so despised, so shamed, so worthless that she turns into public property. No one is raped only once.” - Louise Brown

25. “He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?” - Dave Eggers

26. “The foundation of adult trust is not "You will never hurt me." It is "I trust myself with whatever you do.” - David Richo

27. “When we feel unsafe with someone and still stay with him, we damage our ability to discern trustworthiness in those we will meet in the future.” - David Richo

28. “We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser, that spoke what we thought, that told us what we knew, that gave us leave to be what we inly are.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. “Our higher needs include making full use of our gifts, finding and fulfilling our calling, being loved and cherished just for ourselves, and being in relationships that honor all of these. Such needs are fulfilled in an atmosphere of the five A’s by which love is shown: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.” - David Richo

30. “Your limits are somewhere up there, waiting for you to reach beyond infinity.” - Arnold Henry

31. “My limitless ability to weave time and space does not make me a god - just a da-n good writer.” - Edmund Alexander Sims

32. “You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.” - Will Rogers

33. “The choice is yours: trust the government or trust Mother Nature.” - John Cannell, MD

34. “No one cared what St. Louis thought, although the city got a wink for pluck.” - Erik Larson

35. “....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do.” - Bruce Black

36. “Writing nonfiction means I tell people's stories for them, not because they're special but because we all are.” - Jo Deurbrouck

37. “The genres, it is thought, have other designs on us. They want to entertain, as opposed to rubbing our noses in the daily grit produced by the daily grind. Unhappily for realistic novelists, the larger reading public likes being entertained.” - Margaret Atwood

38. “He was a simple honest man. He never strayed,He never drank, he never smoked, and he never kissed a maid.And when he passed away his insurance was denied,Because he never lived, they claimed he never died.” - Ted Gup

39. “When facing a decision that stands a 50/50 chance of being correct, the choice made will be wrong 80% of the time. Rick Coxen” - Frederick L Coxen

40. “I read nonfiction."She reared back as if offended.” - Anne Osterlund

41. “The ocean, after all, is not about stability but about change. Change is normal. Everything changes. All the time.” - Wendy Williams

42. “Protein, so far as we know, does not replicate itself all by itself, not on this planet anyway. Looked at this way, the [prion] seems the strangest thing in all biology, and, until someone in some laboratory figures out what it is, a candidate for Modern Wonder. (quote originally by Lewis Thomas)” - D. T. Max

43. “I believe that there is something in all of us that is seeking expression, that wants to be heard, that wants to be accepted and respected and loved. We each express ourselves in different ways - through manipulation or domination, through receiving and giving pain, through crying, through loving, through giving hope and inspiration to others. We are all seeking the same thing - expression of who we are and what we want from this life.” - Robin D. Hart

44. “Identify your Radar – it’s your brain functioning optimally; not a vague intuition or cosmic sixth sense.Train your Radar in key areas like: evaluating people, personal safety, healthy relationships, physical and mental well-being, money and credit cards, career choice, how to get organized.Meet the Radar Jammers. They have the power to turn down or turn off our clear thinking Radars.
Some are well known: alcohol and drugs, peer pressure, infatuation, sleep deprivation.
Others are surprising: showing off, fake complexity, anger, unthinking religions, the need for speed, dangerous personality disorders, and even fast food!
Learn reasonable approaches and specific techniques to deal with them all.” - C.B. Brooks

45. “Focus on giants - you stumble.Focus on God - Giants tumble.” - Max Lucado

46. “I'm sure the holy refrigerator is packed solid with cartons of Blue Bell ice cream - times a million. All those amazing flavor combinations minus the calories and fat grams, of course. After all, we are talking about heaven here, amen?” - Diane Moody

47. “My pastor, Pete Wilson, gave a message on prayer, specifically citing this idea many of us have that prayer is a kind of transaction. beside him on the platform, an object the size of a refrigerator stood cloaked beneath a black cover. He said, 'most of us have reduced prayer down to a transaction. A way to manipulate what we want. A vending machine.' At that point, he yanked off the cover revealing a large vending machine, loaded with all kinds of snacks. He inserted some coins and pushed the button for peanut M&Ms (smart man, my pastor). Nothing happened. He hit the machine a couple of times, tried to rock it. Nothing.He continued. 'Most of the time when we go to God, it's because we want something. If we get what we want, we turn and walk off, satisfied. If we don't get what we want, we get frustrated; we kick the machine and blame God for not answering our request.'This 'transaction' view of prayer will always disappoint us because at the root of it, we think it's all about us. but prayer is so much more than giving God a list of our wants and needs or, in some cases, our demands. Prayer is communication. It's talking and listening.” - Diane Moody

48. “For you and me, just knowing His presence is all around us can help lift us from the darkest night, embrace us in the loneliest hour, give us strength when we are tempted, and enable us to live confident and secure in His promises.” - Diane Moody

49. “The good news is we don't have to suffer alone. We don't have to carry the burdens of our messy lives alone. God is there for us. He wants to be the Comforter in Chief for the worst that life on this earth may hand us. but we need to know Him - genuinely know Him - not just when tragedy strikes. We need to know Him every moment of every day we live. We need to quit leaving it to the professionals and make know Him the most important mission of our lives.” - Diane Moody

50. “Though I have started emailing with one of my fellow readers whenever there's something important to say about Modern Family or Friday Night Lights, and with another when I notice her updates on Goodreads.com.” - Rachel Bertsche

51. “Jenny slowly awoke on the sacrificial altar to an Ethereal Light that flamed through the east wall, a radiant aura of love dispersing the frightful scene. A glow pulsating from Angeletta's body still burning in the fire pit slowly rose to join the Light. A Heavenly peace infused Jenny as she realized, "There's a man standing in the air straight above me!” - Judy Byington