Quotes About Achievement

A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills.

Life wasn't easy growing up; it was frustrating. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, everything would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

On one of my last days at school, the headmaster said I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. That was quite a startling prediction, but in some respects, he was right on both counts!

If I do something, I do it with the idea to get to the top - without that, I would stop living.

I've been lucky enough to have fulfilled so many ambitions, and gone way past anything I ever thought I would do. I could never have imagined the career that I've had with the Foo Fighters - playing stadiums and having songs on the radio. It's amazing, and my goal is really just to carry on playing.

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.

When I finally held the trophy, it was just how I imagined it would be.

I had never passed a single school exam, and clearly never would.

I worked in Hollywood as a reader and a would-be writer for about 6 years before I sold my first story.

When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope.' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

So you wound up with Apollo. If he's sometimes hard to swallow. Use this.

At Penn State, I ran distance and cross country as a walk-on. I wound up running a lot of marathons, 30-plus. I was okay. I won one in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I think it was around 2:30. I could crank those out all day.

I went to college for communications, so I came out and said I wanted to work for the greatest communications company, and I ended up at HBO - and I couldn't have been happier. And now, as an actress, I wound up back at HBO - and they truly are the best.

People talk about the pain of defeat, but I think defeat has a lot of value. I think the wound of victory can be even more damaging than defeat. Very few people really know how to win.

I'm fortunate that my job gives me the motivation to be as fit as possible. I wound up in a profession that requires physical and mental preparation, so I get to prepare like an athlete for everything I do. I'm living the dream, man.

I wound up getting offered a job at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I invented a power supply mechanism for the Galileo space craft which was in orbit around Jupiter until 2003.

I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.

I danced growing up. I had two friends of mine that, actually, one of them wound up dancing with Alvin Ailey.

I wound up graduating from the Los Angeles County School for the Arts as a theatre major and then was honored to be accepted into Carnegie Mellon's Musical Theatre program.

Attending Columbia had always been my dream, but the truth is, my decision not to go wound up opening the door to things that would have, in the past, seemed too big to even be worth dreaming about.

Whatever organization I wound up in, I was just going to work my way up from the bottom.

When I was a kid it was big news when someone flew around the world in a little aeroplane, but nobody cared when I did it. Then, to rub salt into my wounds, the customs people ripped my aeroplane to pieces, looking for stuff.

Sometimes I flashback and say, 'Wow I'm still doing this. Wow, it's crazy.' And I'm very thankful, but I think my body needs a rest.