Quotes About Achievement

He was a man who combined familial greatness with personal mediocrity.

Those who pursue the process of living are those who create the history

That's the only hitch in learning: it's humbling. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Anyway, all that's a long way around saying that it's crazy to do things just to prove you can do 'em. The more you learn, the more you'll find yourself doing things you never thought you could do in a million years.

Anyone can fight a battle that's easy to win. It's fighting the battles that are impossible to win that causes humanity to take those great leaps forward.

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem - which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.

Effectiveness must be learned.

People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.

We know very little about self-development. But we do know one thing: People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature--without any more effort than is expended by the non-achievers.

Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

If you have a goal that you still postpone, that means, it's not one of your strengths

The brilliant insight is not by itself achievement

He looks up from his work and outward toward goals. He asks: "What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and the results of the institution I serve?" His stress is on responsibility.

Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge are essential resources, but only effectiveness converts them into results. By themselves, they only set limits to what can be attained.

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence

A person's way of performing can be slightly modified, but it is unlikely to be completely changed—and certainly not easily. Just as people achieve results by doing what they are good at, they also achieve results by working in ways that they best perform. A few common personality traits usually determine how a person performs.

And productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness.

Effective executives focus on outward contribution. They gear their efforts to results rather than to work.

Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

Exploiting opportunities produces results.

What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Much more important is noticing—and helping the students notice—what they are doing well, particularly the leading edge of what is going well. This leading edge is where the student has reached beyond herself, stretching what she knows just beyond its limit, producing something that is partly correct. This is the launching pad for new learning.

Wat ik ooit voor mezelf heb gedacht is niets; ik ben niet meer dan wat me gelukt is tegen jullie te zeggen.

The Chinese people had invented the compass, paper, the printing press, gunpowder, the seismograph, the crossbow, and the umbrella; they had sailed to Africa in the fifteenth century; they had constructed the Great Wall; over the past decade they had built their economy at a rate never before seen in the developing world. They could return a rental car with exactly three-eighths of a tank of gas, but filling it was apparently beyond the realm of cultural possibility.