Quotes About Achievement

It is probably better that the world knows only the result, not the conditions under which it was achieved; because knowledge of the artist's sources of inspiration might bewilder them, drive them away and in that way nullify the effect of the excellent work.

Greatness! Extraordinariness! Conquest of the world and immortality of the name! What good was all the happiness of people eternally unknown compared with this goal?

Wußtest du nicht, daß man auch in einer kleinen Stadt ein großer Mann sein kann? Daß man ein Cäsar sein kann an einem mäßigen Handelsplatz an der Ostsee? Freilich, dazu gehört ein wenig Phantasie, ein wenig Idealismus ... und den besaßest du nicht, was du auch von dir selbst gedacht haben magst.

Quien se esfuerza por alcanzar lo excelso, nota el ansia de reposar en lo perfecto

Reposar en la perfección es el anhelo de todo el que se esfuerza por alcanzar lo sublime; y ¿no es acaso la nada una forma de perfección?

Art's vital need for revolutionary progress and achievement of the new depends on the vehicle of the strongest subjective sense for what is hackneyed, for what has nothing more to say, for those standard, normal means that have now become 'impossible'.

But beauty, too, is never perfected and for that very reason incites to vanity; for beauty works hard to achieve what it finds lacking in its own self-imposed ideal - yet another error, for beauty's secret actually consists in the attraction that comes from imperfection.

A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

The Need to Win When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets – He is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, But the prize Divides him. He cares, He thinks more of winning Than of shooting – And the need to win Drains him of power.

SIT FINIS LIBRI, NON FINIS QUAERENDI

People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

must become convinced and penetrated by the realization that without my love for them they may perhaps not achieve the things God has willed for them.

Good Demeter mothering keeps a child in the heat and passion of life which immortalize and establish soulfulness. Mothering involves not only physical survival and achievement—Demeter's grain and fruit—it is also concerned with guiding a child to his or her unknown depths and the mystery of fate.

The Chinese remind us that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, yet they keep curiously silent about the step itself, which too often must be taken, as now, from inaccessible ground, if not indeed straight down into an unmeasured abyss.

But they produced nothing but talk and at that not very good talk. A few like Slab actually did what they professed; turned out a tangible product. But again, what? Cheese Danishes.

I am so old that I can remember when other people's achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.

Slippery use of the word "privilege" is part of a vogue of calling achievements "privileges"—a vogue which extends far beyond educational issues, spreading a toxic confusion in many other aspects of life.

Empirically, political activity and political success have been neither necessary nor sufficient for economic advancement. Nor has eager political participation or outstanding success in politics been translated into faster group achievement.

Someone with an inborn knack for mathematics or music may be just as productive as someone who was born with lesser talents in these fields and who had to work very hard to achieve the same level of proficiency. However, we reward productivity rather than merit, for the perfectly valid reason that we know how to do it.

Most notable achievements involve multiple factors—beginning with a desire to succeed in the particular endeavor, and a willingness to do what it takes, without which all the native ability in an individual and all the opportunity in a society mean nothing, just as the desire and the opportunity mean nothing without the ability.

Top colleges turn out extraordinary graduates because they take in extraordinary freshmen. That tells very little about what happened in the intervening four years, except that it did not ruin these individuals completely. It tells even less about what would have happened if these same extraordinary people had been educated elsewhere. Whether a given individual will do better, either educationally or financially, by going to a bigname college is very doubtful. Hard

our brightest kids have been going downhill even faster than our average kids.

With blacks as with whites, the redneck culture has been a less achieving culture. Moreover, that culture has affected a higher proportion of the black population than of the white population, since only about one-third of all whites lived in the antebellum South, while nine-tenths of all blacks did.

In a realm where educational failure has long been the norm—schools in low-income minority neighborhoods—this is success, a remarkable success. What is equally remarkable is how unwelcome this success has been in many places. What has been especially remarkable is that it has been the most educationally successful charter schools that seem to have drawn the most hostility, both in words and in deeds.