86 Posts Found

Talent only matures when harnessed within a personality that is capable of self-improvement. And talent, ironically, has a nasty knack of protecting the talented from the urge to self-improve.

Content: Quotation | Author: Ed Smith | Source: Ode | Subjects: Ability, Achievement, Success / Failure

The opposite of success is not failure, but mediocrity. To achieve big successes, you need to take big risks; if you take little or no risks, mediocrity is guaranteed.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Marisa Taylor, Michael E. Raynor | Source: Ode | Subjects: Achievement, Success / Failure

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Theodore Roosevelt | Sources: History as Literature, Hold this Thought | Subjects: Achievement, Action, Leadership, Success / Failure

Excellent performers judge themselves differently than most people do. They’re more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies. Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great or poorly or okay.

By contrast, the best performers judge themselves against a standard that’s relevant for what they’re trying to achieve. Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best; sometimes … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Geoffrey Colvin | Source: FORTUNE | Subjects: Achievement, Personal Development, Success / Failure

Opportunists are humble enough to realize that the random forces of nature are more powerful than themselves. That these random forces often conspire to make things ridiculously easy just as often as they conspire to create hurricanes and earthquakes. Most people realize that a lot depends on being in the right place at the right time. Very few realize that this situation is not the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Venkatesh Rao | Source: ribbonfarm | Subjects: Achievement, Creativity, Opportunity

He who have never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.

Content: Quotation | Author: Herman Melville | Source: Bruce Lynn Blog | Subjects: Achievement, Success / Failure

If I had select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down 70 times and get off the floor saying, ‘Here comes number 71!

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard M. Devos | Source: Bruce Lynn Blog | Subjects: Achievement, Success / Failure

Yesbutters don�t just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers. Yesbut we�re different.
Yesbut we can�t afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn�t need it.
Yesbut we couldn�t sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can�t explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let�s wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

Whynotters move Companies.

The next time you�re in a meeting, look around and identify
the yesbutters, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Unknown | Subjects: Achievement, Attitude, Organizational Behavior

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine…it’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.

And … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Zaadz | Subjects: Ability, Achievement

The great Western Disease lies in the phrase, “I will be happy when…”

Content: Quotation | Source: Fast Company | Subjects: Achievement, Wisdom

Everything can look like a failure in the middle.

Content: Quotation | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Achievement, Success / Failure

Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subjects: Achievement, Goals

What you want is better than, not optimal. Your job is to do something today that’s better than what you did yesterday. And to do something tomorrow that’s better than what you did today.

Content: Quotation | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Achievement, Goals

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.

Content: Quotation | Source: The Official Website of Malcolm X | Subjects: Achievement, Adversity

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Achievement, Vision

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

Content: Quotation | Source: CEO Refresher | Subject: Achievement

The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

Content: Quotation | Source: LeaderValues | Subjects: Achievement, Goals

What’s the easiest way to get rid of emotional tension? You can do it in less than a minute. Just diminish your vision. Revise it so it’s easier to attain – or abandon it altogether. However, when you relieve emotional tension, you also compromise creative tension. We call this the structure of compromise, or the structure of mediocrity. You could explain all the mediocrity in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Achievement, Vision

The problem here is that all people are not created equal, though America is driven by this noble falsehood, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Stirring and instructive nonsense, but nonsense nevertheless. We aren’t equal. We don’t all have the same capabilities, the same chances, or the same luck. We don’t even have the same inclinations.

Here’s the idea: Everybody thinks he or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Achievement, Personality / Behavior

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible — and achieve it, generation after generation.

Content: Quotation | Source: Unknown | Subjects: Achievement, Challenge