Quotes About Determination

He had a great general's ability to focus on his goals and brush aside obstacles as petty distractions. "You can abuse me, you can strike me," Rockefeller said, "so long as you let me have my own way.

The chief quartermaster on the West Coast, Robert Allen, an old friend of Grant's, learned he was holed up in a cheap miner's hotel called "What Cheer House." He found Grant in a spartan garret room furnished with a cot, a pine table, and a chair. "Why, Grant, what are you doing here?" Allen asked. "Nothing," Grant replied. "I've resigned from the army. I'm out of money, and I have no means of getting home.

In public exigencies, there is hardly anything more prejudicial than excessive caution, timidity and dilatoriness, as there is nothing more beneficial than vigour, enterprise and expedition.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"49

Grant roomed with Fred Dent, who also singled out Grant as "the clearest headed young man I ever saw . . . He always wanted to do what was right, and we all had great respect for him. He was a singed cat—a great deal better than he looked.

Jack lacked the nerve to contest his terrifying, distant father.

The uproar didn't weaken Rockefeller's resolve, yet for all his bravado the boycott exacted a grave toll on his operations.

When rebuffed by a bank officer for a loan, he shot back in anger, "Some day I'll be the richest man in the world.

He was the embodiment of power and purpose.

Shaped by a childhood of uncertainty, he aspired to be self-sufficient in business

Another explanation is that while he was persistent, he was also extremely slow; as at school, some people thought him a rather dim-witted dolt who would never rise in the world, and he had to prove himself to naysayers.

However, he was persistent, which pleased or displeased people according to taste.

Once he had made up his mind, however, he was no longer troubled by doubts and pursued his vision with undeviating faith.

He believed there was a time to think and then a time to act. He brooded over problems and quietly matured plans over extended periods. Once he had made up his mind, however, he was no longer troubled by doubts and pursued his vision with undeviating faith. Unfortunately, once in that state of mind, he was all but deaf to criticism. He was like a projectile that, once launched, could never be stopped, never recalled, never diverted.

Had he known what lay ahead, it seems doubtful that he would have persevered.

He was not a man to abandon a project that had received his blessing.

John D. Rockefeller had an unfailing knack for knowing who would help or hinder him in his career, an instinct only sharpened by time.

Though he brushed off his critics as minor irritants and professed faith in his own integrity, it could not have been easy to face such universal opprobrium.

By early 1873, he had crossed his own Rubicon and never looked back.

From the outset, the young Hamilton had phenomenal stamina for sustained work: ambitious, orphaned boys do not enjoy the option of idleness.

He was a slow learner but patient and persistent and, like J. P. Morgan and Jay Gould, exhibited a terrific head for math.

When they didn't flinch, Rockefeller launched an all-out attack.

Hamilton did not know it, but he just wrote himself out of poverty.

and awaited instructions.