2025 has been a whirlwind of a year, with New Year’s Eve bringing a close to a year I know I would personally like to tuck away until I forget all the bad parts.
But we are strong. We persevere, no matter what lies ahead. 2025 has continued to test our strength, and we’ve made it to a new year. So why not show 2026 what we’re made of with some inspirational, positive, and funny New Year quotes?
Most of these are short New Year quotes about family, good wishes, and keeping New Year’s resolutions. You’ll find some sarcastic quotes as well as beautiful ones.
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I’ve also got a great list of 100 New Year resolution ideas to choose from if you need some goal-setting inspiration for 2026!
Inspirational and Motivational New Year Quotes
Get you a New Year’s Day quote that will keep you motivated to reach your goals all year long!
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
-Dan Millman, author of The Life You Were Born to Live
“Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
-Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.”
-Neil Gaiman
“Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.”
-Alan Cohen, author of The Master Keys of Healing
“The beginning is the most important part of any work.”
-Plato
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
-Nelson Mandela
“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”
-William Shakespeare
“New year—a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours.”
-Alex Morritt, author of Impromptu Scribe
“In order to be successful in the new year, stay focused, develop a positive attitude, and be passionate with your dreams.”
-Bamigboye Olurotimi, poet
“Although no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”
-Carl Bard, poet
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals; adjust the action steps.”
-Confucius
“On New Year’s Eve the whole world celebrates the fact that a date changes. Let us celebrate the dates on which we change the world.”
-Akilnathan Logeswaran
“Take the briefest of moments to celebrate yesterday’s achievements before getting back to work on tomorrow’s big plans.”
-Bright Color Mom
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
“Don’t ever feel like your best days are behind you. Reinvention is the purest form of hope. Make today your best yet.”
-Phil Wohl, author
“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start.”
-Nido Qubein, author of Daily Motivation
“Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
-David McCullough Jr., author of You Are Not Special
“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
-C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia
Positive New Year Quotes and Wishes
Starting a new year can be both exciting and daunting. These New Year quotes are full of the best wishes for new goals and are encouraging of fresh starts.
“Everyone says 2026 has to be better than 2025. The truth is, it doesn’t, because things can always get worse. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep fighting for better days.”
-Bright Color Mom
“It’s okay to completely forget 2025 and leave it behind. It’s also okay to hang onto the little moments of good that may have happened. Move on in a way that’s best for YOU.”
-Bright Color Mom
“I close my eyes to old ends. And open my heart to new beginnings.”
-Nick Frederickson, poet
“You almost certainly still have problems today, just as you did at the beginning of last year. But if your problems are different ones now, then you have had a successful year.”
-Bright Color Mom
“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”
-Hal Borland, author
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”
-Edith Lovejoy Pierce, 20th-century poet
“Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing.”
-Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life
“When you start to think that things should have been better this year, remember the mountains and valleys that got you here. They are not accidents and those moments weren’t in vain. You are not the same, you have grown and you are growing. You are breathing, you are living, you are wrapped in endless boundless grace. And things will get better. There is more to you than yesterday.”
-Morgan Harper Nichols, author of All Along You Were Blooming
“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, poet
“Packaged inside of every mistake there lays a great lesson. And while I don’t want to take the mistake into the New Year, I most certainly want to take the lesson that’s packaged inside of it.”
-Craig D. Lounsbrough, author of The Self That I Long to Believe In
“New year is the glittering light to brighten the dream-lined pathway of future.”
-Munia Khan, author of The Half Circle
“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘it will be happier.'”
-Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.”
-Brad Paisley
“The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.”
-Arnold Bennett, author of How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day
“The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.”
-Josiyah Martin, author
“Strength shows not only in the ability to persist, but the ability to start over.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Each year’s regrets are envelopes in which messages of hope are found for the new year.”
-John R. Dallas Jr.
“This bright new year is given me
To live each day with zest
To daily grow and try to be
My highest and my best!”
-William Arthur Ward, author of Miracles That I Have Seen
“This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.”
-Taylor Swift
“Sometimes a year has been so disastrous and so terrible that entering a new year will automatically mean entering a wonderful year!”
-Mehmet Murat ildan, Turkish author
“To the old, long life and treasure; to the young, all health and pleasure.”
-Ben Jonson, playwright
“Enter this new year with a gratitude for this new chance to create your dreams.”
-Avina Celeste, writer
“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.”
-Meister Eckhart, author
“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
-Oprah Winfrey
“The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written.”
-Melody Beattie, author of Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making it Matter
“New beginnings are in order, and you are bound to feel some level of excitement as new chances come your way.”
-Oscar Auliq-Ice
“You have the pencil and paper in your hand, you write the story of the upcoming year. May your story be a year filled with positive happenings and successes, with few erase marks and full of exclamation marks.”
-Theodore W. Higginsworth
“Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas.”
-Charles Kettering, inventor
“A new year. A fresh, clean start! It’s like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities!”
-Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes
Funny and Sarcastic New Year Quotes
Start the new year off right with some sassy New Year quotes that will give everyone on your feed a good chuckle.
“2026 has to be better due to sheer, collective will.”
-Bright Color Mom
“Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.”
-Bill Vaughan, journalist
“A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.”
-Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil)
“Many years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to never make New Year’s resolutions. Hell, it’s been the only resolution I’ve ever kept!”
-D.S. Mixell, author
“I think it would be much more sensible if resolutions began generally on January the second.”
-Helen Fielding, author of Bridget Jones’s Diary
“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.”
-Bill Vaughan
My New Year’s resolution was going to be to quit all my bad habits, but then it occurred to me – no one likes a quitter.
“You can get excited about the future. The past won’t mind.”
-Hillary DePiano, playwright
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
-Michael Altshuler
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough!
“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions!”
-Joey Adams, comedian
Short New Year Letter Board Quotes
These letter boards are full of cute New Year quotes perfect for Instagram!
“Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.”
-Jonathan Huie, author of 100 Secrets for Living a Life You Love
“The best is yet to come.”
-Frank Sinatra
“You are never too old to reinvent yourself.”
-Steve Harvey
“You will never win if you never begin.”
-Helen Rowland, author of Reflections of a Bachelor Girl
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
-Abraham Lincoln
Be the girl who decided to go for it.
“The past has no power over the present moment.”
-Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
New Year Quotes About Family and Friends
Celebrate your family with beautiful, meaningful New Year quotes that remind us all what’s at the center of our goals and resolutions.
“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”
-David Bowie
“In our perfect ways, in the ways we are beautiful, in the ways we are human, we are here. Happy New Year’s. Let’s make it ours.”
-Beyonce
“Instead of taking your family for granted another year, spend this one trying to brighten their lives.”
-Bright Color Mom
“I wish you health, wealth, and happiness this year, but more importantly, I wish you the strength to build them for yourself.”
-Bright Color Mom
“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
-Robin Sharma, author of The 5am Club
“As the year comes to a close, it is a time for reflection – a time to release old thoughts and beliefs and forgive old hurts. Whatever has happened in the past year, the New Year brings fresh beginnings. Exciting new experiences and relationships await. Let us be thankful for the blessings of the past and the promise of the future.”
-Peggy Toney Horton, author
New Year, New Me Quotes
These new year, new you quotes are about becoming your best self and celebrating new beginnings.
“The attraction of New Year is this: The year changes, and in that change we believe that we can change with it. It is far more difficult, however, to change yourself than turn the calendar to a new page.”
-R. Joseph Hoffmann, author
“Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.”
-Guy Finley, author of The Secret of Letting Go
“Every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all of our lives.”
-Steven Spielberg
“Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.”
-Germany Kent, author of The Hope Handbook: The Search for Personal Growth
“New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.”
-Charles Lamb, poet
“Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn’t get better. You get better.”
-Joan Rivers
“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws but for potential.”
-Ellen Goodman, journalist
“It’s a new dawn
It’s a new day
It’s a new life,
for me,
And I’m feeling good.”
-Nina Simone
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.”
-Joseph Campbell, author
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each year find you a better man.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Remove ‘shoulds’ from your vocabulary this year. Start your journey of self-love now.”
-Kelly Martin
“We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
-George Eliot, author
New Year Resolution Quotes
Some of these New Year resolution quotes are funny, some are heartfelt, and not all of them are positive!
“This year, be structured enough for success and achievement and flexible enough for creativity and fun.”
-Taylor Duvall
“Never make a resolution which won’t be as important on the eighth of April or the tenth of July as it is on the first of January.”
-Cary Grant
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”
-Tony Robbins
“May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!”
-Aleister Crowley, author
“New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provide this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”
-James Agate, theatre critic
“Let our New Year’s resolution be this: We will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.”
-Göran Persson, former Prime Minister of Sweden
“Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.”
-Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune columnist
“Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.”
-Cavett Robert, author of Success with People: Your Action Plan for Prosperity and Success
“Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
-Helen Keller
“Planning to simply recover from a really bad year absolutely counts as a New Year’s resolution.”
-Bright Color Mom
“It’s not the resolutions you make once a year that matter, but the ones you make with every single breath.”
-Beau Taplin, poet
“Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.”
-Susan Sontag, author
“He who breaks a resolution is a weakling; he who makes one is a fool.”
-F.M. Knowles, painter
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”
-Abraham Lincoln
“With the dawn of the new year on the horizon, I resolved to exert my will on the world.”
-Holly Black, fantasy author
“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”
-Vern McLellan, author
I hope these New Year quotes have gotten you excited for the year ahead. We all sure could use a good one.
Such great quotes! And an excellent way to end the year off! Thanks for sharing!