Quotes About Challenge

Seneca thinks the gods are well pleased when they see great men contending with adversity.

Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.

One was never married, and that's his hell; another is, and that's his plague.

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours."

Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours.

Well, Mr. Secretary, I lived in a house without electricity too. No running water, no telephone...I can stand toe-to-toe with you. in response to Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill

It is far more common to fight your way through terrible software designs than it is to enjoy the pleasure of working with a good one.

That these acts are simple doesn't mean that they are simplistic, and it hardly means that they are easy.

The Bombing Two Dauntlesses were launched with 12 percent less than maximum fuel, which would have critical impact later in the morning.

Where to Begin?" Printed in Stuttgart in March 1902, under the title What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement,

He soon recovered sufficiently to resume work, but suffered further strokes on December 13 and 22, after which he had to submit to a regime of greatly reduced activity.

In troubled times the last thing you want to do is to stick your money into a film. It's such a gamble.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

The Spin's not just some abstract phenomenon—you guys made them look the beast in the eye, and good for you, I guess, but if your project goes wrong you steal that courage away again, and now it's worse because they've seen the thing. And they will not love you for failing, Tyler, because it will leave them more frightened than they've ever been.

don't know how to fix it. I don't have spare parts. Or the right tools. I'm not even sure what the right tools are.

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527

Years later, a Japanese visitor tried to apologize to Mao for his country's invasion of China. Mao interrupted, "Should I not thank you instead?" Without a worthy opponent, he explained, a man or group cannot grow stronger.

actively rebel against those forces that have pushed you away from your true path.

This means that you move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you, where you will get the most objective feedback on your performance and progress. You do not choose apprenticeships that seem easy and comfortable.

But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

What you know must translate into action, and action must translate into knowledge. In this way strategy becomes a lifelong challenge and the source of constant pleasure in surmounting difficulties and solving problems.

Instead of internalizing a bad situation, externalize it and face your enemy. It is the only way out.

Your first task as a strategist is to widen your concept of the enemy, to include in that group those who are working against you, thwarting you, even in subtle ways.

We have learned the rules so well that we can now be the ones to break or rewrite them.