Quotes About Persistence

We all get our dreams stamped on from time to time, right? And if it didn't hurt, what kind of second-rate dreams would they be?

I just lie there like an upside-down turtle trying to right itself.

It means the faction found us." He looks around again. "How?" "How the fuck do I know? Spy satellites? Facial recognition pigeons on the freeway signs? Ballerinas with Uzis? What does it matter? Just hit the fucking accelerator.

For a second, nothing happens and I'm sure that I've reached a new level of fucked. Then the hardpack around the rib shatters and I haul it out of the ground like a deranged Fred Flintstone.

I'm sweating like a hog tap-dancing in a sauna.

Sometimes annoyance will keep you going when booze and fear and hope are as dead as the Big Bopper.

Like a lot of stupid people, it took a great deal to get an idea into the king's head but once there, there was no shifting it.

Devotion means putting in extra hours because you believe in something and you want to see it work. You believe in something with all your heart and are very passionate about it.

It's a philosophy promoted by Silicon Valley start-ups that the best people are those who don't know that something "can't be done," and therefore will figure out how to do it.

Don't let life discourage you everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.

An oft-heard exclamation in teachers' lounges and school conferences is: "If she'd only try harder, she would do better." In fact, the opposite is true. In actuality, If she only did better, she would try harder.

Poor school performance and productivity are temporary; motivation is permanent.

A great many preachers die of style, that is, of trying to soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot as their ideas do, they might succeed and live.

If no one ever tried anything, even what some folks say is impossible, no one would ever learn anything. So you just keep on trying and maybe some day you'll try something that will work.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

We in effect challenge the unwanted prodigy to produce forms that slip through our control systems. It does not take much to beat us. One seed in a thousand may germinate later than the last hoeing, pass through the sieve intended to exclude it, show a mysterious immunity to weedkillers. The following year there are five . . .

we were all driven by something that pushed us further than others dared to go. We were mission oriented and would do what we had to do to achieve it.

There may be more to learn by climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains.

There is no problem that cannot be solved. —NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

A powerful example of beliefs at work: When schoolchildren are encouraged to believe that their bad grades come from lack of effort rather than lack of intelligence, they show remarkable gains in both persistence and accomplishment.

motivation follows action instead of the other way around.

Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.

sometimes it's the fight that makes a thing worth having

Only those who never step, never stumble.