Quotes About Greatness

It's the type of thing where, if you gonna battle somebody to prove your greatness, you wanna go to somebody that shares that same seat with you.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

When I was a kid, I wanted to fight Joe Louis. But I think if I had seen Mike Tyson at that time, I would have said, 'Nah, I don't want to fight him.' He's deadly. He could have been one of the great heavyweight champions. But he goofed.

The great player, so much of the greatness, in my mind, is in his heart and his head. It's not in his body, in his skill set. It comes from having great talent but wanting to mold that and fit it together into being special. And being special means winning championships.

I don't believe in perfection. I don't think there is such a thing. But the energy of wanting things to be great is a perfectionist energy.

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

We all want recognition and validation to an extent for our art, but greatness as a trade for decency is a risky proposition. In my life, I try to leave the people I encounter with the feeling that they have been respected and treated with warmth and appreciation.

People still knew me as Charles, so when I came across Charlemagne in a history book, that sounded good: Charles the Great, a warrior who used his power to spread religion and education. He was the head of the Carolingian dynasty, and with me being from South Carolina, that clicked.

'The Iliad' is about a war 1,200 years ago that solved nothing and achieved nothing. Most of our wars achieve very little. But whatever agenda I have gets buried in a work this great. If you're being honest, you realize that, as an artist, you're not a policy maker.

In America, we may acknowledge Washington and Lincoln as great men, and probably Franklin and Jefferson and maybe Franklin Delano Roosevelt and possibly even several more, but we would probably disagree about precisely what it was that made them great, what it was that enabled them to give a lasting direction to the course of events.

In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness.

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.

Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, when working to another aim.

All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

To be simple is to be great

The greatest man in history was the poorest

Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

The borrowing is often honest enough, and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. A great man quotes bravely and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word as good.