80+ Best Emotional Intelligence Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict. Inspirational emotional intelligence quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.

If you’re searching for uplifting quotes about strength and famous forgiveness quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of greatest control quotes, inspiring challenge quotes, and powerful being a man quotes.

Famous Emotional Intelligence Quotes

If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far. Daniel Goleman

It is one of the great paradoxes of the human condition  we ask some variation of the question, How are you feeling? over and over, which would lead on to assume that we attach some importance to it yet we never expect or desire or provide an honest answer. Marc Brackett

75 percent of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust.  Center for Creative Leadership

If you are interested in learning more, this is a great podcast to listen to; Unlocking Us | Brené Brown  Dr. Marc Brackett and Brené on Permission to Feel or one of my favorite books  The Choice by Edith Eger.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion. Dale Carnegie

In life, we are all too often taught and pressured to withhold or suppress emotions. However, this can have far reaching and negative consequences. The true power is in understanding, feeling, and expressing them!

When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves. Jess C. Scott

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. Viktor E. Frankl

The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart.  Rasheed Ogunlaru

It is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond. Edith Eger

No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care. Theodore Roosevelt

We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.  Edith Eger

Unleash in the right time and place before you explode at the wrong time and place. Oli Anderson

My message for everyone’s the same: that if we can learn to identify, express, and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.  Marc Brackett

The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions. John Hancock

How you react emotionally is a choice in any situation. Judith Orloff

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master. Epictetus

If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far. Daniel Goleman

Anyone can be angry that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way that is not easy. Aristotle

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. Dale Carnegie

Every time we allow someone to move us with anger, we teach them to be angry.  Barry Neil Kaufman

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor Frankl

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Leo Buscaglia

When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master. Benedict de Spinoza

Emotions can get in the way or get you on the way. Mavis Mahzura

We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel. Marshall B. Rosenberg

Experience is not what happens to you it’s how you interpret what happens to you. Aldous Huxley

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. Elizabeth Gilbert

Running a marathon with a backpack is tough and may hinder you from winning the race. Don’t let the baggage from your past heavy with fear, guilt, and anger slow you down.  Maddy Malhotra

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.  Maya Angelou

Our feelings are not there to be cast out or conquered. They’re there to be engaged and expressed with imagination and intelligence. T.K. Coleman

Perhaps the most liberating moment in my life was when I realized that my self loathing was not a product of my inadequacy but, rather, a product of my thoughts. Vironika Tugaleva

When you make people angry, they act in accordance with their baser instincts, often violently and irrationally. When you inspire people, they act in accordance with their higher instincts, sensibly and rationally. Also, anger is transient, whereas inspiration sometimes has a lifelong effect. Peace Pilgrim

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind. Bruce Lee 

It isn’t stress that makes us fall it’s how we respond to stressful events.  Wade Goodall

The strength of character and emotional intelligence to face your failures and learn from them are at the core of success. Robert Kiyosaki

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame. Benjamin Franklin

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence. Oscar Wilde

Emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection, and influence.  Robert K. Cooper, PhD

Don’t let people who don’t care about you, manipulate your mind, feelings and emotions or control how you think about yourself. Never give that much power to someone else. Karon Waddell

It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head it is the unique intersection of both. David Caruso

There are six elements of gravitas critical to leadership: grace under fire, decisiveness, emotional intelligence and the ability to read a room, integrity and authenticity people don’t like fakes, a vision that inspires others, and a stellar reputation.  Sylvia Ann Hewlett

We define emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. Salovey and Mayer

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. Oscar Wilde

For news of the heart, ask the face. West African saying

Always, emotional freedom involves choosing where you put your attention. Judith Orloff

Let’s not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it. Vincent van Gogh

It is not depression or anxiety that truly hurts us. It is our active resistance against these states of mind and body. If you wake up with low energy, hopeless thoughts, and a lack of motivation  that is a signal from you to you. That is a sure sign that something in your mind or in your life is making you sick, and you must attend to that signal. Vironika Tugaleva

The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. Donald Calne

Emotional intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It defines how and what we learn; it allows us to set priorities; it determines the majority of our daily actions. Research suggests it is responsible for as much as 80 percent of the success in our lives. J Freedman

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. Remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind. Dale Carnegie

Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary emotion.

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you. Roger Ebert

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master. Epictetus

Change happens in the boiler room of our emotions so find out how to light their fires. Jeff Dewar

Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go. Expression is the opposite of depression. Edith Eger

If we lack emotional intelligence, whenever stress rises the human brain switches to autopilot and has an inherent tendency to do more of the same, only harder.  Which, more often than not, is precisely the wrong approach in today’s world.  Robert K. Cooper

Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame. Benjamin Franklin

Never react emotionally to criticism. Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified. If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business. Norman Vincent Peale

Each moment is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always choose how we respond.  Marc Brackett

To increase your effectiveness, make your emotions subordinate to your commitments. Brian Koslow

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. C.G Jung

When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. Stephen R. Covey

Hard times of any kind financial, familial, or job related create more intense and often prolonged negative emotions that ultimately result in stress. In addition to the physical costs of stress, such as weight gain and heart disease, stress also taxes our mental resources.  Travis Bradberry

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. Kahlil Gibran

You do control the thoughts that follow an emotion, and you have a great deal of say in how you react to an emotion as long as you are aware of it.

 Remember that failure is an event, not a person. Zig Ziglar

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us out in marching onward. Henry Ford

We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful. Eric Micha’el Leventhal

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we have a clear picture of it. Benedict Spinoza

I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will. Antonio Gramsci

CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise  and fired for a lack of emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The best leaders don’t know just one style of leadership  they’re skilled at several, and have the flexibility to switch between styles as the circumstances dictate. Daniel Goleman

A leader is a dealer in hope. Napoleon Bonaparte

Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That’s why they look alike. Daniel Goleman

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway

Positive work environments outperform negative work environments. Daniel Goleman