“Perhaps we ll never know how far the path can go, how much a human being can truly achieve, until we realize that the ultimate reward is not a gold medal but the path itself.”
“People pretend not to like grapes when the vines are too high for them to reach.”
“Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I ll show you someone who has never achieved much.”
“But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity s a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”
“Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50.”
“Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement.”
“Remember how far you’ve come, and you won’t have to rely on a destiny for your future. It will come on your own.”
“For almost a generation, psychologists around the world have been engaged in a spirited debate over a question that most of us would consider to have been settled years ago. The question is this: is there such a thing as innate talent? The obvious answer is yes. Not every hockey player born in January ends up playing at the professional level. Only some do – the innately talented ones. Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger role preparation seems to play.”
“You are an instrument of God. Don t leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for Three Blind Mice when you can can play the Gloria ? No, not Bach s Gloria. Yours! Your Gloria lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.”
“You are the greatest achievement of your own life.”
“Only the impossible is worth doing.”
“There is one other error in the Gondsman s line of resoning, I believe, on ap urely emotional level. If machines replace achievement, then to what will people aspire? And who are we, truly, without such goals? Beware the engineers of society, I say, who would make everyone in all the world equal. Opportunity should be equal, must be equal, but achievement must remain individual.”
“The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.”
“Every step taken by us towards the achievement of our purpose is a blessing!”
“Every achievement worth remembering is stained with the blood of diligence and scarred by the wounds of disappointment”