Quotes About Achievement

I had only played five games in my senior year in high school. I was not large enough. Hell, when I graduated, I was about five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. I didn't go with the Dodgers until spring training of 1940 and I weighed all of 155 pounds soaking wet.

I actually think the last time I stood with a race medal around my neck was after an eighth grade cross-country meet. I was gawky and 65 pounds soaking wet, and running 10 miles a day was no big deal.

The phone started ringing when I dropped 'Whack World.'

For every whack I've given, I've gotten four or five.

We have sat on the river bank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale.

Thanks to a lot of people, not just myself, 'Whale Rider' had an amazing impact emotionally, and people remember it. I count myself very lucky that all those doors were unlocked, I just had to open them.

I bought a midnight blue Porsch with a whale tail when I was winning big one time in L.A. That car was fast, fast, fast!

You watch 'Whale Rider,' and I defy you to not get teary-eyed at the end there.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors... What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you'd come to closed door number eight and you'd think, 'Great, I got another one out of the way'... Keep moving forward.

I was really unfit for a while, so once I began running, I developed an obsession with it and started feeling really good. Then I thought I'd run a marathon after watching the London Marathon on TV. So I did it and had a good time. And then I ended up doing a bunch, and I was like, 'What if I could go further?' So I found out about Ultra Marathons.

It's seen as dirty to be ambitious. What if U2 weren't ambitious? We wouldn't have that gift we have from them.

My brother's an aerospace engineer who works for Boeing, and I started thinking, 'Well, my brother works nine hours a day at his job... What if I worked nine hours a day at being an actor?'

It's gone on my whole life, this David and Goliath syndrome that a lot of these smaller guys always have. They think the only reason I've ever had any success in my career is because of my physical size. And you know what? If that's the case, so be it. I really don't care. Because I have that size.

Being a popular director or actor's son can be frightening in this industry. What if you are not able to make it?

What if you didn't have education for sports? People with a natural inclination for sports, athletes without any kind of education, without any kind of training, they would just be couch athletes instead of the world class Olympians that we have.

I thought, 'Let's make it a check list. What if I got my education even though I lost my mother, even though my dad is in a shelter?' and looking at these things as hurdles to go over. I could inspire myself.

You go to the edit room and see one scene which has come out fantastically, and you feel the film will set records. By evening, you look at the budget figures or something that hasn't worked out and ask yourself - what if this doesn't work?

One day, I just ended up thinking, 'You know what? If we get to 13-0, it's not me. If we go 10-2, it's not me.'

You know what, if I had to do it all again, I would do the same things as before. I would meet the same people, make a lot of friends, bring a lot of happiness to my country. I get to travel all over the world, doing seminars. I have thousands of students in the Nogueira gyms.

I'm probably wouldn't do anything differently if I had to do it again. Every little thing that happens to you, good and bad, becomes a little piece of the puzzle of who you become. Every successful person you read about - Warren Buffett, Bill Gates - they all say pretty much the same thing. 'Do what you love.' I know I did.

If you spend your days doing what you love, it is impossible to fail. So I go about my days trying to bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. And then everyone gets furious about it. And then I sit back and say, 'I did that!'

Success is when you see something, and you say, 'I want to do that,' and then you do it. It's being happy with what you do and doing what you love every day.

It's hard to just go one day from another to being one of the best fighters in the world to just stop doing what you love to do.

I don't think I have ever thought of myself as a movie star. I think when I was about seven, I thought it must be lovely to have an Oscar. But the more involved you are in this business, the more that pretence disappears, and you really get to see what you love about it, and what I love is working.