Quotes About Perseverance

But for so many of us, that fear of falling short makes us not want to start. As Richard Thaler quipped, "If a gold medal in the Olympics is the only grade that passes, you do not want to ever take your first gymnastics class.

That we make both types of errors, sometimes sticking too long and sometimes giving up too early, shouldn't be that surprising because whether to stick or quit aren't separate decisions. They are one and the same. Whenever you choose to stick, you are, by definition, not quitting. The reverse is true when you choose to quit.

The result is that we'll quit when we're ahead, even if we're giving up good opportunities to win more. If we're behind, we don't want to quit, even if persisting—to try to get to the other side of zero—is more likely to make things worse.

Progress along the way should count for something, but we discard it because goals are pass-fail, all-or-nothing, yes-or-no. There's no partial credit given.

Quitting on time usually feels like quitting too early, and the usually part is specifically when you're in the losses.

But there is one aphorism that actually encourages people to quit: Quit while you're ahead. Just as so many of those inspirational quotes lauding unlimited persistence are bad advice, this single piece of pro-quitting wisdom, despite surviving for more than four hundred years, is no better.

eight times more people die on Everest on the way down than on the way up.

The real advice we should give people is more complicated than you can fit in a four-word slogan: Quit while you're ahead . . . when the game you are playing or the path you are on is a losing proposition. If you are in a situation that carries with it a negative expected value, by all means quit. But keep going when you have a positive expected value.

He considers it his duty to help these founders understand the futility of persevering, so these brilliant people can move on to more worthwhile opportunities. The first obstacle Conway faces is the most obvious one: getting founders to actually recognize that the venture is failing and that it's time for them to walk away. Conway is battling the host of cognitive and motivational forces that make it hard for these entrepreneurs to do that.

Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early. If you quit on time, it's not going to seem like anything particularly dire is happening at that particular moment. That's because quitting is a problem of being able to glimpse at the range of ways the future might play out and see that the likelihood that things will turn out poorly is too high to make it worth your while to continue.

Teller realizes that when you're building pedestals, you are also accumulating sunk costs that make it hard to quit even as you find out that you may not be able to train the monkey to juggle those torches.

Astro Teller also understands a subtler but no less important point, that we have a tendency, when we butt up against a monkey that is proving difficult to solve, to turn our attention to building pedestals rather than giving up. We prefer that illusion of progress to having to quit and admit defeat.

All these famous people, and countless others, have united behind variations of the expression "Quitters never win, and winners never quit.

Tout de même, supporter tant de mépris... Vronski, pire que Vronski.

My whole story as a woman: going down a flight of stairs, and hanging back at each step.

Depuis vingt ans, je note « 58 » dans mes projets de livre. C'est le texte toujours manquant. Toujours remis. Le trou inqualifiable.

L'interminable lenteur d'un temps qui s'épaississait sans avancer, comme celui des rêves.

Parfois des ivrognes notoires se rachetaient par un beau jardin cultivé entre deux cuites.

Well I thought my time was over, but it's only just begun.

At the highest speed I can sustain on the hills, about 14 minutes for a mile, I do not even try to think of anything else.

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Piece by piece living is hard to do. It may even feel like the hardest thing. But it has this going for it: you never need to know what it is you're carrying on your shoulders.

Obstacles do not appear in your way in order to stop you. Rather, they appear in order to strengthen and hone you and your plans. They are not your enemy. They are your secret ally, but only if you treat them as friendly forces of nature.

We either get success or lessons. If we learn our lessons successfully, we get both.