Quotes About Achievement

Ambition is often—and often purposefully—misidentified with the desire for power, and damned with faint praise, and denigrated, and punished.

Thus, the position of top dog, when occupied properly, has as one of its fundamental attractions the opportunity to identify deserving individuals at or near the beginning of their professional life, and provide them with the means of productive advancement.

Random wandering will not move you forward. It will instead disappoint and frustrate you and make you anxious and unhappy and hard to get along with (and then resentful, and then vengeful, and then worse).

We are not equal in ability or outcome, and never will be. A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don't take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.

But "feeling of a conqueror" can all too easily become "actual conqueror.

Then you ask yourself, "What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?" Then you do what you have decided to do, even if you do it badly. Then you give yourself that damn coffee, in triumph.

growing might be the most important form of winning.

Una gran parte de las emociones positivas que sentimos está relacionada con objetivos. Técnicamente hablando, no somos felices si no nos vemos progresar, y la mera idea de progreso implica un valor.

Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you, superior to you—and that you can't always be sure you will reach. But if it's uncertain that our ideals are attainable,

Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you, superior to you—and that you can't always be sure you will reach.

What is a truly reliable source of positive emotion?" The answer is that people experience positive emotion in relationship to the pursuit of a valuable goal.

we don't experience any positive emotion unless we have an aim, and we can see ourselves progressing toward that aim

You might be winning but you're not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?

those who start to have will probably get more.

The winners don't take all, but they take most, and the bottom is not a good place to be.

with each day, your baseline of comparison gets a little higher, and that's magic. That's compound interest. Do that for three years, and your life will be entirely different. Now you're aiming for something higher. Now you're wishing on a star. Now the beam is disappearing from your eye, and you're learning to see. And what you aim at determines what you see. That's worth repeating. What you aim at determines what you see.

Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak.

Success: that's the mystery. Virtue: that's what's inexplicable. To fail, you merely have to cultivate a few bad habits. You just have to bide your time.

You might object: I should be winning at everything! But winning at everything might only mean that you're not doing anything new or difficult. You might be winning but you're not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?

Agresija je u temelju ljudskoga poriva da bude izniman, nezaustavljiv, da se natje?e i pobijedi - da bude krjepostan, barem u jednom segmentu. Odlu?nost je njezino zadivljuju?e prosocijalno lice.

Ambition is often—and often purposefully—misidentified with the desire for power,

by the end of the day, I want things in my life to be a tiny bit better than they were this morning. Then you ask yourself, "What could I do, that I would do, that would accomplish that, and what small thing would I like as a reward?

Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you, superior to you—and that you can't always be sure you will reach. But if it's uncertain that our ideals are attainable, why do we bother reaching in the first place? Because if you don't reach for them, it is certain you will never feel that your life has meaning.

Making something beautiful is difficult but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful - even one thing then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world.