I just read the incredible book Can’t Hurt Me.
These David Goggins quotes from the book are sure to get you fired up, inspired, and motivated to succeed.
Here’s a Can’t Hurt Me Book Review as well…
Lastly, I’ve made quite a few of the shorter quotes tweetable quotes.
Feel free to bookmark this page and come back again on those days you need some easy tweets (and great tweets).
Can’t Hurt Me
Introduction
Goggins starts by setting us up for the powerful story ahead.
He starts the book in the introduction by saying:
“When you’re driven, whatever is in front of you, whether it’s racism, sexism, injuries, divorce, depression, obesity, tragedy, or poverty, becomes fuel for your metamorphosis… It’s time to go to war with yourself.” – David Goggins
“Heraclitus, a philosopher born in the Persian Empire… 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…”
David Goggins Quotes
(Chapter 1)
I should have been a statistic. -David Goggins Click To Tweet
“I was healing, but my demons weren’t gone. They were dormant. And when they came back, they hit hard.” -David Goggins
Maybe your limiting factor is that you grew up so supported and comfortable, you never pushed yourself? -David Goggins Click To TweetCan’t Hurt Me Quotes
(Chapter 2)
“I was one of those kids who thought he was gaming the system, but the whole time, I’d been gaming myself” -David Goggins
We all need thicker skin to improve in life. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort” -David Goggins
When you have no confidence it becomes easy to value other people's opinions. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Being tough and resilient helped me meet my goals” -David Goggins Quote
Each insult or dismissive gesture became more fuel for the engine revving inside me. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I developed an obsession for learning” -David Goggins
Living with purpose changed everything for me... -David Goggins Click To Tweet Whatever your goals, you'll need to hold yourself accountable for the small steps it will take to get there. -David Goggins #accountabilitymirror Click To Tweet“Your past, your deepest fears, have a way of going dormant before springing back to life at double strength. You must remain vigilant.” -David Goggins
Doing the Impossible Quotes
(Chapter 3)
“Physically I was strong, but I was not even close to mastering my mind.” -David Goggins
All I knew was there would be pain and there would be purpose... And I was ready. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Back then, when an obstacle appeared, I folded.” -Can’t Hurt Me Quote
“I didn’t see the opportunities offered because I knew I was a quitter who had let fear dictate my future.” -David Goggins
I had every excuse in the world to be a loser, and I used them all. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I knew right then that if I didn’t make a stand and start walking the path of most resistance, I would end up in this mental hell forever.” -David Goggins Quote
I was betting everything I had on myself with no guarantees. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Dig down to the micro-level and do something that sucks everyday. -David Goggins #impossibletask #discomfortzone Click To Tweet“If I continued to surrender to my fear and my feelings of inadequacy, I would be allowing them to dictate my future forever.” -David Goggins
Taking Souls (Chapter 4)
“This battle, like most battles we fight in life, would be won or lost in our own minds” -David Goggins
Most battles we fight in life are won or lost in our own minds. -David Goggins #canthurtme #takingsouls Click To Tweet“I needed to know if I had what it took to belong… most people don’t.” -David Goggins
Reality has a way of kicking everyone in the teeth sooner or later. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Everything in life is a mind game! -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Each of those incidents was an act of defiance that empowered us” -Can’t Hurt Me
I'd come to SEAL training to see if was hard enough to belong and found an inner beast within me that I never knew existed... I considered myself unbreakable. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I didn’t just survive, I was about to finish Hell Week at the top of my class and for the first time, I knew I was a bad motherf****r.” -David Goggins
Whatever standard they set as an ideal outcome, you should be aiming to surpass that. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Whoever you’re dealing with, your goal is to make them watch you achieve what they could never have done themselves.” -David Goggins
David Goggins Quotes
(Armored Mind – Chapter 5)
Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind. -David Goggins Click To Tweet
Obstacles at work and school can also be overcome with your calloused mind. -David Goggins Click To Tweet You can tolerate doubt as a backseat driver, but if you put doubt in the pilot's seat, defeat is guaranteed. -David Goggins #armoredmind Click To Tweet The vast majority of us are slaves to our own minds. -Can't Hurt Me Quote Click To Tweet The shame comes when you throw in the towel. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“The sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight reflex. We’ve all tasted this feeling before. Those mornings when going on a run is the last thing you want to do, but twenty minutes into it you feel energized, that’s the work of the sympathetic nervous system. What I’ve found is that you can tap into it on-call as long as you know how to manage your own mind. When you indulge in negative self-talk, the gifts of a sympathetic response will remain out of reach.” -Can’t Hurt Me Quote
“If I was born to suffer, then I may as well take my medicine.” -David Goggins
I was my own worst enemy! It wasn't the world, or God, or the Devil that was out to get me. It was me! -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I thrived off the barbaric beauty of seeing the soul of a man destroyed, only to rise again and overcome every obstacle in his path.” -Can’t Hurt Me
“When the pain did show up, I told myself it was proof of how tough I was and how much tougher I was becoming.” -David Goggins
It would be up to me to continue to hunt impossible tasks... my quest to defy the odds had only just begun! -David Goggins Click To Tweet“You must also visualize the challenges that are likely to arise and determine how you will attack those problems when they do.” -David Goggins
Visualization will never compensate for work undone. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe #ArmoredMind Click To Tweet“Why are you doing this? What is driving you toward this achievement? Where does the darkness you’re using as fuel come from? What has calloused your mind?” -David Goggins (Can’t Hurt Me Book)
Victory doesn't mean you came in first place. It can mean you've finally overcome a lifelong fear or any other obstacle that made you surrender in the past. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“It takes relentless self-discipline to schedule suffering into your day, every day, but if you do, you’ll find that at the other end of that suffering is a whole other life just waiting for you.” -David Goggins
Can’t Hurt Me Quotes
(Chapter 6)
“When I looked down, I saw bloody piss leak down my leg. I S*** myself too… I had to hide it because I knew if Kate saw how bad off I really was she would beg me to pull out of the race. I’d run seventy miles in twelve hours with no training, and this was my reward.” #CantHurtMe
“This run, Badwater, my entire desire to push myself to the brink of destruction, was about me. It was about how much I was willing to suffer, how much more I could take, and how much I had to give.” -David Goggins
“Humans tend to hatch our most challenging goals and dreams, the ones that demand our greatest effort yet promise absolutely nothing, when we are tucked into our comfort zones.” -David Goggins
“Because you are one hard motherf****r”, I screamed. “I had to bite back out loud. I was onto something. I felt an energy build immediately, as I realized that still being in the fight was a miracle in itself.” -David Goggins
I remembered dropping over 100 pounds in 3 months. -David Goggins Click To Tweet The cookie jar became a concept I've employed whenever I need a reminder of who I am and what I'm capable of. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Any goal, however improbably, is not impossible. -David Goggins Click To TweetVery few of us take time to celebrate our successes. -David Goggins #cookiejar Click To Tweet We need to spark a bunch of small fires to become the motherf*****g inferno. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“The engine in a rocket ship does not fire without a small spark first. 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 f*****g forest down.” -David Goggins
“I’d just accomplished the most amazing feat of my entire life. It was harder than Hell Week, more significant to me than becoming a SEAL, and more challenging than my deployment to Iraq because this time I had done something I’m not sure anyone had ever done before… I ran 101 miles with zero preparation.” -David Goggins
The Most Powerful Weapon
(Chapter 7)
“I contemplated another simple question I couldn’t shake. It was a new one, and wasn’t fear-based, pain-spiked, or self-limiting… What am I capable of?” -David Goggins
What am I capable of? -David Goggins #dontgetcomfortable Click To Tweet“We’re all leaving a lot of money on the table without realizing it. We habitually settle for less than our best; at work, in school, in our relationships, and on the playing field or race course.” -Can’t Hurt Me Quote
“I loved waking up at 5 a.m. and starting work with three hours of cardio already in the bank while most of my teammates hadn’t even finished their coffee.” -David Goggins
That's what getting up at the crack a** of dawn and putting out will do for you. It makes you better in all facets of your life. -David Goggins Click To Tweet The threshold for suffering is different for everybody. What's universal is the impulse to succumb. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe #The40PercentRule Click To Tweet“It’s only when I push beyond pain and suffering, past my perceived limitations, that I’m capable of accomplishing more, physically and mentally.” -David Goggins
“The human body is a stock car. We may look different on the outside, but under the hood we all have huge reservoirs of potential and a governor impeding us from reaching our maximum velocity.” -David Goggins Quote
Sadly, most of us give up when we've only given around 40 percent of our maximum effort. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Our governor is buried deep in our minds, intertwined with our very identity… pain and exhaustion, fear and insecurity… it uses all of that to encourage us to stop before we risk it all. Unlike the governor in an engine, ours can’t stop us unless we buy into its bulls*** and agree to quit.” -David Goggins
“Letting go of your identity and all your self-limiting stories, so you can get to 60%, then 80% and beyond without giving up. I call this the 40% Rule.” -David Goggins Quote
“The only way to move beyond 40% is to callous your mind, day after day. Which means you’ll have to chase pain like it’s your d*** job!” -Can’t Hurt Me
Nobody taps their 60% right away or all at once. #CantHurtMe #DavidGoggins Click To Tweet Fatigue makes cowards of us all. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“You’ll be able to absorb 12 rounds… and come back the very next day and fight again. It’s not that the punch has lost power. Your opponents will be even stronger. The change has happened within your brain. You’ve calloused your mind.” -David Goggins Quotes
“You can remind yourself that you are not as drained as you think. That you haven’t given it your all… Not even close.” -David Goggins
“It’s easy to be open minded when you leave yoga class and are taking a stroll by the beach, but when you’re suffering, keeping an open mind is hard work.” -David Goggins
The next test is coming... That's a guarantee. -David Goggins Quote Click To Tweet Staying in the game... gave me hope, and hope is addictive. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“…made me realize there is a whole other level of athlete out there in the world, and that some of that was inside me too. In fact, it’s in all of us” -David Goggins
We don't all have the same floor or ceiling, but we each have a lot more in us than we know. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet We MUST remove our governor. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Research is one part of preparation; visualization is another. -David Goggins Click To TweetWe know life can be hard, yet we feel sorry for ourselves when it isn't fair. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Who hasn’t dreamed up a possibility for themselves only to have friends, colleagues, or family s*** all over it? Most of us are motivated as h*** to do anything to pursue our dreams until those around us remind us of the danger, the downside, our own limitations, and all the people before us who didn’t make it.” -David Goggins
“We have access to so many more resources today than ever before and yet we are so much less capable than those who came before us.” Can’t Hurt Me Quote
The battlefield for me was my own mind. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To TweetIt takes a lot of will to push yourself when you are all alone. -David Goggins Click To TweetWe don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. -David Goggins Click To Tweet
There is no finish line... there is no finish line. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“The bottom line is that life is one big mind game. The only person you are playing against is yourself.” -Can’t Hurt Me
Talent Not Required
(Chapter 8)
“Evaluate your life in it’s totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bulls***.” -David Goggins Quote
“Sometimes, even when you are doing everything right in life, s*** storms appear and multiply. Chaos can and will descend without warning.” -David Goggins
Sometimes life hits you dead in the motherf***ing heart. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“I was running on a tank perpetually half full, and that meant my life was absolute proof of what’s possible when someone dedicates themselves to harnessing the full power of the human mind” -David Goggins
David Goggins Quotes
(Chapter 9)
In my mind I was training for opportunities that didn't even exist yet. -David Goggins Click To Tweet
“When it comes to mindset, it doesn’t matter where other people’s attention lies. I had my own uncommon standards to live up to.” -David Goggins
“No matter what you or I achieve, in sports, business, or life, we can’t be satisfied. Life is to dynamic a game. We’re either getting better or we’re getting worse. -David Goggins Quote
Most people in the world, if they ever push themselves at all, are willing to push themselves only so far. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“We didn’t care about muscle fatigue or breakdown because after a certain point we were training our minds, not our bodies.” -David Goggins
“We are all fighting the same battle. All of us are torn between comfort and performance, between settling for mediocrity or being willing to suffer in order to become our best self…” -David Goggins Quotes
I brought the war to people and watched my excellence explode small minds. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“If you really want to become uncommon amongst the uncommon, it will require sustaining greatness for a long period of time.” -David Goggins Quote
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Can’t Hurt Me Quotes
(Empowerment of Failure – Chapter 10)
“The number in my head was 4,020 pull-ups… Sounds super-human, right?” -David Goggins Quote
“(This) …built up my lactic acid tolerance so my muscles could still function long after they were overworked.” -David Goggins
I was about to go to war with myself... -David Goggins Click To Tweet“…and for the first time that day, doubt carved out a home in my brain” -David Goggins Quotes
I failed and I failed in front of millions of people. -David Goggins Click To Tweet To me, failure is just a stepping stone to future success. -David Goggins Click To Tweet By thinking of money first (always a bad idea) I wasn't focused on the task at hand. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“You can’t prepare for unknown factors, but if you have a better pre-game focus, you will likely only have to deal with one or two rather than ten.” -David Goggins Quote
A lot of us surround ourselves with people who speak to our desire for comfort. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“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.” -David Goggins
Most wars are won or lost in our own heads. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet In life, there is no gift as overlooked or inevitable as failure. -Can't Hurt Me Quotes Click To Tweet“You can’t let a simple failure derail your mission… Everyone fails sometimes and life isn’t supposed to be fair, much less bend to your every whim.” -David Goggins
The scoreboard does not lie. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Believe it or not, most people prefer delusion. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“Life is a capricious b****.” 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 entitlement 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
“My belief was shakier than I cared to admit.” -David Goggins
Roger Banister
4 Minute Mile Story
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… on May 6th, 1954, he didn’t just break a record, he broke open the floodgates simply by proving it was 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 Quotes
“We are all guilty of allowing so-called experts, or just people who have more experience in a given field than we do, to cap our potential.” -David Goggins
“I needed to stop listening to doubt… and the best way to do that was to decide that the pull-up record was already mine. I didn’t know when it would officially become mine.
It might be in 2 months or 20 years, but once I decided it belonged to me and decoupled it from the calendar, I was filled with confidence and relieved of any and all pressure because my task morphed from trying to achieve the impossible into working toward and inevitability.” -David Goggins
“That doesn’t mean I was having any fun. I wasn’t. I was over it… but achieving goals or overcoming obstacles doesn’t have to be fun.” -David Goggins Quote
“It takes great strength to be vulnerable enough to… work toward a dream that feels like it’s slipping away.” -David Goggins
Life is a head game. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“Nobody who cares about us actually wants us to get hurt. They want us to be safe, comfortable, and happy, and not to have to stare at the floor in a dungeon sifting through shards of our broken dreams. Too bad. There’s a lot of potential in those moments of pain.” -David Goggins Quote
“I had to find an edge somewhere, and if you find it in the person standing in your way, that’s potent.” -David Goggins Quotes
“Doubt stalked me like a shadow. I tried my best to control it or silence it, yet it kept reappearing, following me, pushing me.” -David Goggins
“Life is one long motherf***ing imaginary game that has no scoreboard, no referee, and isn’t over until we’re dead and buried.” -David Goggins
All I'd ever wanted was to become successful in my own eyes. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet Control your mindset. Dominate your thought process. -David Goggins Click To Tweet This life is all a f***ing mind game. Realize that. Own it! -David Goggins Click To Tweet
What If? (Chapter 11)
I do know that pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind. One that leads to both peak performance and beautiful silence. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“I didn’t listen to any of that. I created a new dialogue…” -Can’t Hurt Me Quote
Rage is a powerful thing. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“They say it takes 60 days to build a habit. For me it takes a h*** of a lot longer than that, but I eventually get there.” -David Goggins Quotes
I grew up beat down and abused, filtered uneducated through a system that rejected me at every turn, until I took ownership and started to change. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“My brain… was programmed to do work, scan the horizon, ask what’s next, and get it done.” -David Goggins
I lived in fear and doubt, terrified of being a nobody and contributing nothing. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“When you persist past that to the point that pain fully saturates the mind, you become single-pointed. The external world zeroes out. Boundaries dissolve and you feel connected to yourself, and to all things, in the depth of your soul.” -David Goggins Quotes
In this life there are countless trails to self-realization, though most demand intense discipline, so very few take them. -David Goggins Click To Tweet Peaceful but never satisfied. -David Goggins Click To TweetWe live a life defined by the limits we imagine and desire for ourselves because it's comfortable as hell in that box. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To TweetTo 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.” -David Goggins Quote
“For some… limits start to feel like bondage, and when we least expect it, our imagination jumps those walls and hunts down dreams that in the immediate aftermath feel attainable. Because most dreams are.” -David Goggins
Most people who are merely inspired or motivated will quit. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“The few who remain outside their walls will encounter even more pain and much more doubt, courtesy of those who we thought were our biggest fans.” -David Goggins Quotes
It's not the external voice that will break you down. It's what you tell yourself that matters. The most important conversations you'll ever have are the ones you'll have with yourself. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet 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. -David Goggins Click To Tweet“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 Quote
What If?... silences negativity. It's a reminder that you don't really know what you are capable of until you put everything you've got on the line. -David Goggins Click To Tweet What if is the power and permission to face down your darkest demons, your very worst memories, and accept them as part of your history. -David Goggins Click To Tweet 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. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“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 Quotes
“I hope that right now you are nose-to-concrete with your own bulls*** limits you didn’t even know were there.” -David Goggins
I hope you're willing to do the work... I hope you're willing to change. You'll feel pain, but if you accept it, endure it, and callous your mind, you'll reach a point where not even pain can hurt you. -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet“My passion still burns, but to be honest, it takes a bit longer to channel my rage” -David Goggins
What if? -David Goggins #CantHurtMe Click To Tweet
Conclusion of David Goggins Quotes
and Can’t Hurt Me Quotes
This book is absolutely fantastic and though these quotes are awesome, they pale in comparison to reading the book.
You can’t support this website by using our affiliate link to order the book on Amazon.
Check out the video below to see how this book has affected me in a positive way.
Please tweet and share this post so we can get David Goggins message of living boldly without limits to the everyone who needs to hear it!
God Bless.
Jason & Daniele
P.S. Motivation and achievement is great, but if you’re looking for purpose and meaning in your life then you need a relationship with Jesus Christ.
