#achieve

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence

When the awareness of what is achievable brushes your life, your journey has begun. ↗

— Lorii Myers

#awareness #life #lorii-myers #make-it-happen #success

Are you desperate or determined? With desperation comes frustration. With determination comes purpose, achievement, and peace…. ↗

— James A. Murphy

#determination #peace #purpose #life

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. ↗

— Sydney J. Harris

#achievement #curiosity #god #laziness #potential

Achievement seems to be connected with action. Successful men and women keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit. ↗

— Conrad Hilton

#men

The greatest investment one can ever make is the investment into humanity, for an achievement based on positive influence into people's life can stand the test of time, survive through the mortality of men and resound endlessly through posterity ↗

— Uzoma Ezeson

#greatest #investment #men

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#focus #goals #goals

Do you know the hallmark of a second rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement. Those touchy mediocrities who sit trembling lest someone's work prove greater than their own - they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you reach the top. The loneliness for an equal - for a mind to respect and an achievement to admire. They bare their teeth at you from out of their rat holes,thinking that you take pleasure in letting your brilliance dim them - while you'd give a year of my life to see a flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear. They have no way of knowing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors - hatred? no, not hatred, but boredom - the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to?" "I've felt it all my life," she said. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#atlas-shrugged #inspirational #mediocrity #objectivism #second-handers

If my mind can conceive it, My heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it! ↗

— Jesse Jackson

#self-confidence #self-confidence

Have you ever felt the longing for someone you could admire? For something, not to look down at, but up to? ↗

— Ayn Rand

#admiration #atlas-shrugged #inspirational #love #objectivism