Volunteer Quotes and Giving Back Sayings
The efforts of volunteers make a lot of worthwhile causes effective. Without them, many organizations couldn’t exist. To recognize their importance and the meaningfulness they provide to others, we’ve prepared this list of volunteer quotes.
Learn from the likes Mahatma Gandhi, Dalai Lama, Helen Keller, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as they philosophize on the importance of giving back and serving others.
As you consider ways you can make this a better planet for everyone, think of what you can volunteer in terms of your time, talent, and treasure. There are many ways to be involved with valuable organizations serving various worthwhile causes. The important thing to do is to take the first step.
Best Volunteer Quotes — Top Ten

1.) Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.
Helen Keller

2.) Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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3.) As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands — one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Audrey Hepburn

4.) Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
James Matthew Barrie

5.) Volunteers don’t get paid, not because they’re worthless, but because they’re priceless.
Sherry Anderson

6.) The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The work of life is to develop it.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
David Viscott
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7.) The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi

8.) Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe

9.) The purpose of life is not to be happy, but to matter – to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you have lived at all.
Leo Rosten

10.) Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.
Elizabeth Andrew
Good Volunteering Quotes
11.) If you want more hope for your future, go help someone else, and have more hope for their future.
Germany Kent
12.) You may not have saved a lot of money in your life, but if you have saved a lot of heartaches for other folks, you are a pretty rich man.
Seth Parker
13.) The sun is never denied the light it gives; likewise, you are never denied the kindness you bestow.
Matshona Dhliwayo
14.) A noble leader answers not to the trumpet calls of self-promotion, but to the hushed whispers of necessity.
Mollie Marti
15.) Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.
Unknown
16.) Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain loving one another.
Erma Bombeck
17.) Even if it’s a little thing, do something for those who have need of a man’s help– something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it. For, remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here, too.
Albert Schweitzer
18.) You may not have saved a lot of money in your life, but if you have saved a lot of heartaches for other folks, you are a pretty rich man.
Seth Parker
19.) The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
Barack Obama
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Giving Back Quotations
20.) Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agrees to serve. And, you don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
21.) You can study government and politics in school, but the best way to really understand the process is to volunteer your time.
Rob McKenna
22.) Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain loving one another.
Erma Bombeck
Doing the Right Thing
23.) The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.
Gordon B. Hinckley
24.) What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Albert Pike
25.) You give but little when you give off your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran
26.) The unselfish effort to bring cheer to others will be the beginning of a happier life for ourselves.
Helen Keller

Serving Others Savings
27.) Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
Dr. Seuss
28.) Our generation has the ability and the responsibility to make our ever-more-connected world a more hopeful, stable, and peaceful place.
Natalie Portman
29.) I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
Mother Teresa
30.) Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead
31.) If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.
Kofi Annan
Giving Quotes
32.) Volunteering is an act of heroism on a grand scale. And it matters profoundly. It does more than help people beat the odds; it changes the odds.
William J. Clinton
33.) If our hopes of building a better and safer world are to become more than wishful thinking, we will need the engagement of volunteers more than ever.
Kofi Annan
34.) As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands — one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.
Audrey Hepburn
35.) The quality of your life will be determined by the quality of your contribution. When you work to improve the lives of others, your life improves automatically.
Kurek Ashley
36.) We have to do what we can to help wherever and whenever it is possible for us to help.
Jackie Chan
37.) If you want to touch the past, touch a rock. If you want to touch the present, touch a flower. And if you want to touch the future, touch a life.
Unknown

Short Volunteer Quotes
38.) To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.
Abraham Lincoln
39.) Service to humanity is service to God.
Lailah Gifty Akita
40.) We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
41.) Even if you just change one life, you’ve changed the world forever.
Mike Satterfield
42.) Volunteers are love in motion!
Unknown
43.) Help one another. There’s no time like the present and no present like the time.
James Durst
44.) Kindness, like a boomerang, always returns.
Unknown
45.) Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.
Muhammad Ali
46.) Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
Henry David Thoreau
47.) It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.
Unknown
48.) Allow the way to your great work to be guided by your service to others.
Mollie Marti
Inspirational Volunteer Quotes and Sayings
49.) Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Horace Mann
50.) Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness.
Seneca
51.) When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
Willie Nelson
52.) The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
Oscar Wilde
53.) Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James

Inspirational Volunteer Quotes
54.) Volunteerism is the voice of the people put into action. These actions shape and mold the present into a future of which we can all be proud.
Helen Dyer
55.) There is no better exercise for your heart than reaching down and helping to lift someone up.
Bernard Meltzer
56.) It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act.
Dalai Lama
57.) If we help each other, we will gain more kindness out of every single kind act that we do.
Putri Agustina
58.) The broadest and maybe the most meaningful definition of volunteering: Doing more than you have to because you want to, in a cause you consider good.
Ivan Scheier
59.) Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more but those giving more.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
60.) At the end of the day, it’s not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished. It’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better. It’s about what you’ve given back.
Denzel Washington
61.) 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
Helping People Quotes
62.)How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Fran
63.) I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
64.) We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
Herman Melville
65.) Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Steve Jobs
66.) Caring is giving from the heart.
Unknown
67.) One of the greatest gifts you can give is your time.
Unknown
68.) Do it with passion or not at all.
Unknown
69.) Life is short. Do stuff that matters.
Unknown
70.) Spread kindness like confetti.
Unknown
71.) Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
72.) Your life is your message to the world. Make sure it’s inspiring.
Unknown
73.) Even the smallest actions are steps in the right direction.
Unknown
How To Use These Volunteer Quotes?
These particular quotes can help you in many ways. Not can they only inspire you to make others’ lives better, but, in the process, these will help improve your own lives as well.
Consider using some carefully selected quotes in your marketing communications. Don’t forget to use a quote in your email sign-off. Or, consider adding one on a rotating basis to the sidebar on your website.
By Mike O’Halloran
Mike is the founder and editor of Greeting Card Poet.
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