Quotes About Determination

He was also a terrific baseball player. That's what had helped him refine his waist: tens of thousands of reps twisting to swing a bat.

Well, you know, I'm the forever optimist.

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

My desire was to leave home in an organized way. Because I was still just a kid, I decided that the best course for independence was to mind my own business and make my own money. I would do any kind of work. I was not shy at all about picking up a shovel and digging.

I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way. I hope it never will.

I was striving to be the most muscular man, and it got me into the movies. It got me everything that I have.

Kurt Marnul can win Mr. Austria," I thought, "and he's already told me that I could too if I train hard, so that's what I'm going to do." This thought made the hours of lifting tons of steel and iron actually a joy. Every painful set, every extra rep, was a step toward my goal of winning Mr. Austria and entering the Mr. Europe competition.

For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to go ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

My vision of where I wanted to go in life was not normal. The whole idea of a conventional existence was like Kryptonite to me.

Of course, now I had to show I was worthy, but I didn't feel at all concerned. I would do whatever it took to get there. I didn't share my feelings of pride with anybody. My style was to keep moving and not reflect too much. But it felt great.

You can't be paralyzed by fear of failure or you will never push yourself.

It's time now to turn this mush into muscles

I always stay hungry, never satisfied with current accomplishments.

The only way to make the possible possible is to try the impossible. If you fail, so what? That's what everybody expects. But if you succeed, you make the world a much better place.

Where the mind goes the body will follow.

I wasn't there to compete. I was there to win.

I have found you can still get the pump to come if you focus and concentrate hard enough.

And when you visualize something very clearly, you believe that you 100 percent can get there.

It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was actually just the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there.

Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. With faith there is no anxiety, no doubt—just absolute confidence.

I never argued with people who underestimated me. If the accent and the muscles and the movies made people think I was stupid, it worked to my advantage.

It's human nature to work on the things that we are good at. If you have big biceps, you want to do an endless number of curls because it's so satisfying to see this major bicep flex. To be successful, however, you must be brutal with yourself and focus on the flaws.

After that, I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn't win every time, that was my mind-set. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: "I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the fucking way, I'm on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.

Though you may not realize it now, you'll eventually recognize it when you take the same disciplined approach in tackling a particular challenge.