Quotes About Persistence

Think about all the time, brainpower, and social or political capital you continued to spend on some commitment only because you didn't like the idea of quitting.

The next time you encounter such a barrier, imposed by people who lack your imagination and drive and creativity, think hard about ignoring it. Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you've decided beforehand it can't be done.

The fact is that solving problem is hard. If a given problem still exists, you can bet that a lot of people have already come along and failed to solve it. Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to track down, organize, and analyze the data to answer one small question well.

A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.

Think about all the time, brainpower, and social or political capital you continued to spend on some commitment only because you didn't like the idea of quitting.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty.

Nor should failure be considered a total loss.

The message is unequivocal: failure may be an option but quitting is not.

The fact is that solving problems is hard. If a given problem still exists, you can bet that a lot of people have already come along and failed to solve it. Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to track down, organize, and analyze the data to answer even one small question well.

Every big problem has been thought about endlessly by people much smarter than we are. The fact that it remains a problem means it is too damned hard to be cracked in full.

Failure may be an option but quitting is not.

When the solution to a given problem doesn't lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong.

What is harder than rock, or softer than water? Yet soft water hollows out hard rock. Persevere. —Ovid

They say life is tenacious. They say given half a chance, or less, life will grow and exist and evolve anywhere, even in the most inhospitable and unlikely of places. Life will always find a way, they say.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory

phrase "often a bridesmaid, never a bride" originated with a 1925 Listerine advertisement.)

Darwin's mind had been profoundly shaped by Lyell's understanding of the deep time of geological transformation, but standing on the beach, watching the breakers crash against the coral, he knows that his mentor is wrong about the origin of the atolls. It is not a story of simple geology, he realizes. It is a story about the innovative persistence of life.

If you're trying to "transform reality" you need to give your ideas the time they need to mature; don't just look for sudden epiphanies. Cultivate your hunches.

Flow starts when we say yes to the fight.

Rilke knew what was up. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answer. What's truer than that...

Here, we want to break that mission statement down into smaller chunks, dividing up the impossible into a long series of difficult but doable goals that, if accomplished, render said impossible much more probable.

If ever you say you can't do something," shouts the announcer, "remember Danny Way.

The true challenge is how you continue doing it, after you've ridden the biggest wave, crossed the longest distance. You set up challenges that are more than what you ever did before. And by getting through it, you get the sensation you've completed something. And if it's dangerous, then other things that scare you, the experience will strengthen you for those situations.