Quotes About Achievement

Cognitive sorting continues from the time that students enter college to the time they get a degree

Its story line is that modern societies identify the brightest youths with ever increasing efficiency and then guide them into fairly narrow educational and occupational channels.

But school is in itself, more immediately and directly than any other institution, the place where people of high cognitive ability excel and people of low cognitive ability fail.

Why would a guy spend five years writing a book when he can buy one for ten bucks?

I already have a doctorate in conflict investment. I don't really need the gifted-amateur reading list.

Fame will come to some. Honor will visit all who work.

But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?" Yes ... the same age you will be if you don't. So let's start.

Fame is not the same as success, and in our true souls we know that.

To the perfectionist, there is always room for improvement. The perfectionist calls this humility. In reality, it is egotism. It is pride that makes us want to write a perfect script, paint a perfect painting, perform a perfect audition monologue.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Making art has taught me that the tiniest smidgen of progress is something to be savored.

You may call it having standards. What you should be calling it is perfectionism.

I can be satisfied by small steps—in fact, very satisfied.

By its very nature, discipline is rooted in self-admiration. (Think of discipline as a battery, useful but short-lived.) We admire ourselves for being so wonderful. The discipline itself, not the creative outflow, becomes the point.

Hacer progresos, no llegar a la perfección es lo que deberíamos pedirnos a nosotros mismos.

es posible ser un artista y tener éxito económico.

QUESTION: Do you know how old I'll be by the time I learn to play the piano? ANSWER: The same age you will be if you don't.

Any success postulated on a permanent artistic plateau dooms us, and it to failure.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars. LES BROWN

Thanks to Granna, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens -- but if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to avoid dissecting their souls.

The peak of a mountain, he says, is always a perilous place to stand, no matter how sweeping the view.

I want a more difficult life, that's all. What I really want is a first-rate life. I may not get it, but the only chance I have lies in getting out of a second-rate life. I may fail completely, but I do want to try. It's to do with me, not you; so don't worry.

the reward of merit is not life's business.

The next day, all that stopped him from feeling pure exultance was the question: had it been too easy?