Quotes About Achievement

Move your feet in the direction that is most favorable for your living up to your full potential.

I don't think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.

How well you do things should be incidental, not integral, to the way you regard yourself.

All rewards have the same effect," one writer declares. "They dilute the pure joy that comes from success itself.

a grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material.

Rewards usually improve performance only at extremely simple—indeed, mindless—tasks, and even then they improve only quantitative performance.

In extreme cases, the "press for success" can reach a fever pitch, such that the child's present is essentially mortgaged to the future. Activities that might bring meaning or enjoyment are sacrificed in a ceaseless effort to prepare for Harvard.

Being afraid of failure isn't at all the same thing as embracing success. In fact, the former gets in the way of the latter.

There's a huge difference between a student whose objective is to get a good grade and a student whose objective is to solve a problem or understand a story. What's more, the research suggests that when kids are encouraged to focus on getting better marks in school, three things tend to happen: They lose interest in the learning itself, they try to avoid tasks that are challenging, and they're less likely to think deeply and critically.

It is not uncommon for the youngest child to outstrip every other member of the family and become its most capable member.

No one can rightly call his garden his own unless he himself made it.

2 years ago I couldn't even spell Graduate and not I are one!

Michael Jordan initially failed to make his varsity high school basketball team but became one of the greatest athletes to ever play the sport.

BIRGing, which stands for basking in reflected glory.

Successes teach us very little. A successful design doesn't tell us how close to failure it might be.

Meeting Oprah Winfrey, I cried like a baby. Meeting Steven Spielberg, I cried like a baby. Meeting Denzel Washington, I gushed like a crazy woman. If I don't get excited or star struck by someone I've been dying to meet, it's time to retire.

Doing the show was like painting the George Washington Bridge. As soon as you finished one end, you started right in on the other.

My mom graduated from the University of Michigan, which is a great school. Then she got her Master's from NYU. She wanted to be an actress, so when she graduated, she had a dream, and she started following it. She moved to New York and took acting classes with people like Denzel Washington.

The March on Washington was a culmination of years of hard work and dedication of many individuals.

I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25.

It's funny, you know: my mother-in-law, who doesn't have an ounce of nerd in her, is just so excited by the fact that I write 'Batman' because she'll see an article about me in the 'Washington Post' or 'The Wall Street Journal' or something. And that means so much to me.

I started making music... I guess I was 12, and I started playing 'Guitar Hero.' And you know, it got to a point where on expert, you can only exceed to a certain point. And so, you know, I was like, 'Let's play real guitar. Let's not waste more time.' So, I got my mom, I told her to buy me a guitar for Christmas, and I started making music then.

My dad pushed me really hard as a kid because he understood that I could be great. He saw the drive that I possessed, and the talent, and he didn't want to see it go to waste. So he pushed me. When he passed away, I had to push myself. And I wasn't going to be denied.