Quotes About Achievement

I had become a magician for them, aiding them to realize accomplishments of which they hadn't even dreamt.

eventually you did. Happy endings all around.

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.

Nothing on earth is more gladdening than knowing we must roll up our sleeves and move back the boundaries of the humanly possible once more.

It was way cool, being the one who did the math.

The last thing I need is to hear one more person saying, 'Isn't Stevie Nicks cute.' I'm not responsible for the way I look, but I am responsible for what I do creatively. Nothing would make me happier than recognition as a songwriter.

Bound for Glory

It's okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.

The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.

Mediocre is merely a failed attempt to be really good.

If it wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth much.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that's actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.

Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.

On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you're doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you're mediocre. You're free to contribute.

Don't listen to the cynics. They're cynics for a reason. For them, the resistance won a long time ago. When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It's not an accident that successful people read more books. Symptoms

A great school experience won't keep you from being remarkable, but it's usually not sufficient to guarantee that you will become so. There's something else at work here.

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.

The Dip is the long stretch between beginner's luck and real accomplishment. The Dip is the set of artificial screens set up to keep people like you out.

Quitting is difficult. Quitting requires you to acknowledge that you're never going to be #1 in the world. At least not at this. So it's easier just to put it off, not admit it, settle for mediocre.

Successful people don't just ride out the Dip. They don't just buckle down and survive it. No, they lean into the Dip. They push harder, changing the rules as they go. Just because you know you're in the Dip doesn't mean you have to live happily with it. Dips don't last quite as long when you whittle at them.

The lesson is that one person with a persistent vision can make change happen, whether climbing rocks or delivering services.

Are you one of those people? One of the people with too many good ideas? The folks who have notebooks filled with notions, or daydreams filled with the future? You've certainly met these people. They're too busy taking notes to get anything done, too busy inventing to actually instigate. To stop this process, one needs to do only two things: Start. And then . . . Ship. Can't

What will make someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It's the understanding of which hard work is worth doing. The only thing that separates great artists from mediocre ones is their ability to push through the dip.

The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value.