Quotes About Achievement

If there's a better book than this, I haven't written it.

XXVI There was set before me a mighty hill, And long days I climbed Through regions of snow. When I had before me the summit-view, It seemed my labor Had been to see gardens Lying at impossible distances.

Golden Boy with feet of clay Let me help you on your way A proper push will take you far - But what a clumsy lad you are!

Stephen E. Ambrose

Here Phaeton lies who in the sun-god's chariot fared. And though greatly he failed, more greatly he dared.

It is simply a question of fulfilment. You feel perfectly alive and magnificently perfected by the knowledge that you are doing what you were put on earth to do.

However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. Where there's life, there's hope.

As often happens in science, discoveries are made in the pursuit of an elusive (and sometimes nonexistent) goal.

There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. (...) However bad life may seem (...) While there's life, there is hope.

I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

I did not expect to survive that long. Yet two years had gone by and I was not that much worse. In fact, things were going rather well for me and I had gotten engaged to a very nice girl, Jane Wilde. But in order to get married, I needed a job, and in order to get a job, I needed a Ph.D.

As Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft (a former post-doc of mine) remarked: I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.

You were supposed to be brilliant without effort, or to accept your limitations and get a fourth-class degree. I took this as an invitation to very little. I'm not proud of this, I'm just describing my attitude at that time, shared by most of my fellow students.

I have had a full and satisfying life. I believe that disabled people should concentrate on things that their handicap doesn't precent them from doing and not regret those they can't do.

As I was growing up in England after the Second World War, it was a time of austerity. We were told that you never get something for nothing. But now, after a lifetime of work, I think that actually you can get a whole universe for free.

greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.

Almost there! Those are not words any writer pines to hear. Much more preferable is "masterpiece" or "timeless brilliance" or "it shall live forever.

When asked, How do you write? I invariably answer, One word at a time, and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she put down thinking: I can do better than this. Hell, I am doing better than this! What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff?

The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.