Attainable Quotes & Sayings

Where absolute superiority is not attainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skillful use ofwhat you have. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Always remember ... Perfection is not attainable, but if you chase perfection you can catch excellence and beyond. Be fearless ... — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Equality is attainable as long as you are part of the majority. — William James

By middle school, students have an image of themselves as readers or nonreaders. Students who do not read see reading as a talent that they do not have rather than as an attainable skill. — Donalyn Miller

My father was a local radio celebrity in the Albany area while I was growing up. That was his dream when he was a boy. I learned from him that some dreams are attainable and the penalty for inaction is regret. — Jonathan Weeks

To all who have known really happy family lives, that is, to all who have known or who have witnessed the greatest happiness which there can be on this earth, it is hardly necessary to say that the highest idea of the family is attainable only where the father and mother stand to each other as lovers and friends. In these homes the children are bound to father and mother by ties of love, respect, and obedience, which are simply strengthened by the fact that they are treated as reasonable beings with rights of their own, and that the rule of the household is changed to suit the changing years, as childhood passes into manhood and womanhood. — Theodore Roosevelt

The goal you set must be challenging. At the same time, it should be realistic and attainable, not impossible to reach. It should be challenging enough to make you stretch, but not so far that you break. — Rick Hansen

The good lawgiver should inquire how states and races of men and communities may participate in a good life, and in the happiness which is attainable by them. — Aristotle.

There are times in our lives when the Lord calls us to seize the opportunities presented us. When we must, no matter how hard or fearful, summon the courage to step out into the unknown, brave the darkness, and embrace the dawn. With the Lord's help, though, such seemingly impossible feats become not only attainable, but essential. — Kathleen Morgan

The popular mythology of creative genius depends on beloved stereotypes of the artist in youth and old age: the misunderstood upstart who forces us to see the world afresh; and the revered sage who shows us depths of insight attainable only through a lifetime of hard-won experience. — Martin Filler

Love's not some amorphous concept created for books and poetry and not attainable. It's real and vital, and it's necessary. Damn it. — Nora Roberts

Just one step. Just one mile. Just one dollar. Just one kiss. Just one person. When we look at life through the lens of 'one,' everything becomes that much more attainable. — Mick Ebeling

Education is the leading human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them; and these two objects are always attainable together, and by the same means; the training which makes man happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others. — John Ruskin

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I suggest that the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modem sense. because such prosperity, if attainable at all. is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man. — Ernst F. Schumacher

The small share of happiness attainable by man exists only insofar as he is able to cease to think of himself. — Theodor Reik

How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not. — John Keats

I seem to want the things I can't have. Occasionally, when something is finally attainable, the chase appears to be over and the fire burns out. — John O'Callaghan

Unleash your potential. Seek the opportunity to make a difference. Success is attainable. You just have to reach out and grab it. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

I think most people think of ballerinas as kind of either as a fairytale, far-away thing that's really not attainable, something they can't grasp, or they think of them as European or Russian and kind of their nose up in the air. So, it's cool for me to, like, sit with them and for them to really see themselves as me. — Misty Copeland

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance. — Samuel Johnson

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it. — Samuel Johnson

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best — Otto Von Bismarck

Loneliness is simply the felt experience of our "Obediential Potency." In our loneliness, "in the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable,"18 we experience our nature, learn the reason why God had made us, and are pushed out of ourselves in order to move toward that end. — Ronald Rolheiser

It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. There's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. — Tom Smothers

Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God's help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires. — Ludwig Feuerbach

I wouldn't want freedom all the time but it's nice to know it's attainable — Denis Hickey

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abandoned the idea of spiritual or intellectual happiness in order to have this material happiness, consisting of a certain number of essential consumer goods. And hence, in the nineteenth century, happiness was linked to a well-being obtained by mechanical means, industrial means, production. The new thing that Saint-Just spoke about was that, in the past, happiness could appear as a very vague, very distant prospect for humanity, whereas now, people seemed to be within reach of the concrete, material possibility of attaining it. That was why happiness was to become an absolutely essential image for the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, and for modern society. Happiness was attainable thanks to industrial development, and this image of happiness brought us fully into the consumer society. — Jacques Ellul

To experience the satisfaction and enjoyment of success in life, a definitive goal is essential. Many people fail at this vital point. The goal must be definite and specific, not in any sense vague or fuzzy. And to prove attainable, its image needs to be sharpened and resharpened continually, so that it stands out vividly in your thoughts. You must know, at all times, precisely and for certain what it is you want to accomplish and achieve. Strong and organized purposefulness toward a definite objective will focus your powers into a strong motivation in attainment of your goal. — Norman Vincent Peale

1. Stress improvement, not perfection (or winning). 2. Don't take yourself too seriously; laugh at yourself and have fun. 3. Set attainable goals; reach them and then set higher ones. 4. Be positive, walk tall, smile often, don't complain or procrastinate. 5. Prepare purposely, but don't overtrain. 6. Remember- Sports is a game and meant to be enjoyable. — Dick Gould

The Fool held his breath. On long nights on the hard flagstones he had dreamed of women like her. Although, if he really thought about it, not much like her; they were better endowed around the chest, their noses weren't so red and pointed, and their hair tended to flow more. But the Fool's libido was bright enough to tell the difference between the impossible and the conceivably attainable, and hurriedly cut in some filter circuits. — Terry Pratchett

During the latency years, American children need experiences that promote academic talents, a sense of responsibility, and most important, a belief that they can attain the goals valued by self and community. They need reassurance that these goals are attainable. — Jerome Kagan

The opening of a foreign trade, by making them acquainted with new objects, or tempting them by the easier acquisition of things which they had not previously thought attainable, sometimes works a sort of industrial revolution in a country whose resources were previously undeveloped for want of energy and ambition in the people: inducing those who were satisfied with scanty comforts and little work, to work harder for the gratification of their new tastes, and even to save, and accumulate capital, for the still more complete satisfaction of those tastes at a future time. — John Stuart Mill

I was only in college, unfortunately, for, um, a year. I think my major was public relations, and I had no idea what it meant except it seemed maybe attainable. — James L. Brooks

Ambiguity is necessary in some of my stories, not in all. In those, it certainly contributes to the richness of the story. I doubt that thematic closure is never attainable. — Gene Wolfe

[P]rescientific people ... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero. — E. O. Wilson

Politeness must be cultivated, for the promptings of nature are eminently selfish, and courtesy and good-breeding are only attainable by effort and discipline. But even courtesy has limits where dignity should govern it, for when carried to excess, particularly in manner, it borders on sycophancy, which is almost as despicable as rudeness. — Arthur Martine

No person will deny that the highest degree of attainable accuracy is an object to be desired, and it is generally found that the last advances towards precision require a greater devotion of time, labour, and expense, than those which precede them. — Charles Babbage

Perfection is not attainable," he used to say, quoting Vince Lombardi. "But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. — Kathryn Perez

Deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and all truth is a species of revelation — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape. — Franz Kafka

Elections are when you have to make a choice. Perfection not often attainable! — Rupert Murdoch

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime. — Socrates

I think it's important for the viewers at home to have something accessible and attainable. — Eric Daman

What I affirm is the intuition that where God's presence is no longer a tenable supposition and where His absence is no longer a felt, indeed overwhelming weight, certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable. And I would vary Yeats's axiom so as to say: no man can read fully, can answer answeringly to the aesthetic, whose "nerve and blood" are at peace in sceptical rationality, are now at home in immanence and verification. We must read as if. — George Steiner

If what was said in the Ethics is true, that the happy life is the life according to virtue lived without impediment, and that virtue is a mean, then the life which is in a mean, and in a mean attainable by every one, must be the best. And the same principles of virtue and vice are characteristic of cities and of constitutions; for the constitution is in a figure the life of the city. — Aristotle.

A vision should be attainable subject to current times and its ability to adapt to changing times. — Pearl Zhu

Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams. — Bella Abzug

Great dad. Yeah, he would ask me for money on birthdays and, you know, inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like, 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable. — Drew Barrymore

World federalists hold before us the vision of a unified mankind living in peace under a just world order ... The heart of their program-a world under law- is realistic and attainable. — U Thant

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being. — Bertrand Russell

So dream big daring dreams, and then underachieve a little bit each day. I recommend setting attainable daily goals that, when achieved, provide positive reinforcement to help you stay on the path to the big goal — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Unconditional love, is love, regardless anything; attainable or impossible. — Anthony Liccione

We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Our Constitution ... has not left the religion of its citizens under the power of its public functionaries, were it possible that any of these should consider a conquest over the conscience of men either attainable or applicable to any desirable purpose. — Thomas Jefferson

Believe in the doctrine of perfect sanctification attainable in this life. — Adoniram Judson

The unattainable was most desireable. The already attained was dull. — Eleanor Herman

Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages. — Samuel Johnson

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal. — Aleister Crowley

We don't claim perfection; even the best journalism is but a first draft of history. But we bring to the challenge certain basic beliefs that aren't much in fashion these days. We believe facts are facts and that they are ascertainable through honest, open-minded and diligent reporting. We thus believe that truth is attainable by laying fact upon fact, much like the construction of a cathedral. News, in short, is not merely a matter of views. And truth is not merely in the eye of the beholder.
[Letter From the Publisher: A Report to The Wall Street Journal's Readers, 12 January, 1993] — Peter R. Kann

The art of investment has one characteristic that is not generally appreciated. A creditable, if unspectacular, result can be achieved by the lay investor with a minimum of effort and capability; but to improve this easily attainable standard requires much application and more than a trace of wisdom. If you merely try to bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness to bear upon your investment program, instead of realizing a little better than normal results, you may well find that you have done worse. — Benjamin Graham

It was only possible because it was attained. An Idea isn't feasible until it becomes reality — Seyi Ayoola

National transformation is also attainable through the simple principle of Truth and Honesty — Sunday Adelaja

There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable. — Penelope Lively

For anarchy to succeed or simply to advance towards its success it must be conceived not only as a lighthouse which illuminates and attracts, but as something possible and attainable, not in centuries to come, but in a relatively short time and without relying on miracles ... — Errico Malatesta

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets. — Charles Dickens

You set your goals to a point where they're attainable, but far enough away that you have to really go get them. And every year I push my goals a little bit farther away, and every year I work a little bit harder to get them. — Rafael Palmeiro

Government is the art of the momentary feasible, of the least bad attainable, and not of the rationally most desirable. — Bernard Berenson

If we can soften our hearts, and if we can access the pure and simple aspect of our nature, then we can regain the realization that everything we need is already inside us and anything is attainable. — Yehuda Berg

Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort. — Deborah Day

The degree of tolerance attainable at any moment depends on the strain under which society is maintaining its cohesion. — George Bernard Shaw

Utopias seem to be much more attainable than one would have believed in other times. And we currently find ourselves faced with a different kind of agonizing question: How can one avoid their definitive attainment? ... Utopias are attainable. Life leads us toward utopias. Perhaps a new century will begin, a century in which the intellectuals and the cultivated classes will dream again of ways to avoid utopias and to return to a non-utopian society, one less "perfect" and more free. — Aldous Huxley

Read Demosthenes or Cicero, read Plato, Aristotle, or any other of that class: you will, I admit, feel wonderfully allured, pleased, moved, enchanted; but turn from them to the reading of the Sacred Volume, and whether you will or not, it will so affect you, so pierce your heart, so work its way into your very marrow, that, in comparison of the impression so produced, that of orators and philosophers will almost disappear; making it manifest that in the Sacred Volume there is a truth divine, a something which makes it immeasurably superior to all the gifts and graces attainable by man. Section — John Calvin

I was taught that everything is attainable if you are prepared to give up, to sacrifice, to get it. Whatever you want to do, you can do it, if you want it badly enough, and I do believe that. I believe that if I wanted to run a mile is four minutes I could do it. I would have to give up everything else in my life, but I could run a mile in four minutes. I believe that if a man wanted to walk on water and was prepared to give up everything else in life, he could do that. — Stirling Moss

Ronan wasn't exactly sure why he was angry. Although Gansey had done nothing to invoke his ire, he was definitely part of the problem. Currently, he propped his cell between ear and shoulder as he eyed a pair of plastic plates printed with smiling tomatoes. His unbuttoned collar revealed a good bit of his collarbone. No one could deny that Gansey was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, he was so polished that it was bearable, though, because he was clearly not the same species as Ronan's rough-and-ready family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City, Gansey's hair was scuffed and his cargo shorts were a greasy ruin from mucking over the Pig. He was barelegged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall. — Maggie Stiefvater

The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder. — Gilbert N. Lewis

If something is difficult for you to accomplish, do not then think it impossible for any human being; rather, if it is humanly possible and corresponds to human nature, know that it is attainable by you as well. — Marcus Aurelius

I have no idea if world peace is attainable. But aiming for it is. — Stockard Channing

Nor is it in fact a purely human knowledge bound by the context and categories of the human mind. Rather, metaphysics, which some of his translators render as metaphysic in order to emphasize its non-multiple but unitary nature, is the science of Ultimate Reality, attainable through the intellect and not reason, of an essentially suprahuman character and including in its fullness the whole of man's being. It is a sacred science or scientia sacra, a wisdom which liberates and which requires not only certain mental capacities but also moral and spiritual qualifications. It — Frithjof Schuon

God is inexhaustibly attainable in the totality of our action. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Wherever I go, I bring the culture with me, so that they can understand that it's attainable. I didn't do it any other way than through hip-hop. — Jay-Z

When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. — Gary Keller

All that is proper to man, however, is faith in the attainable truth, in the ever approaching, confidence-inspiring illusion. Does he not in fact live by constant deception? Doesn't nature conceal virtually everything from him, even what is nearest, for example, his own body, of which he has only a spurious "consciousness"? He is locked up in this consciousness, and nature has thrown away the key. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is rarely possible, when a human being is in deep need, to look upon somebody who offers help as merely another flawed human being with whom one is going to engage in a protracted conversation. A kind of wild idealization sets in, and we imagine the person in whom we confide to possess ineffable and valuable traits beyond those attainable by ordinary mortals. We ascribe value, and project qualities onto this person that almost never correspond with reality. It is a little bit like falling in love - powerful emotions are called forth. It takes a strong person not to exploit the ensuing power imbalance. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Happiness was attainable for anyone who had enough courage to reach for it. Just because I had to reach further than some only made it that much more appreciated. Today, in this moment, I was wrapping both hands around my happiness, grabbing it tight. Hopper's — Cambria Hebert

Many of us have convinced ourselves that compromise is necessary to achieve our goals, that all of our goals are not attainable so we should eliminate the extraneous, prioritize our desires, and accept less than the moon. — Garth Stein

Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry. — Stephen Spender

Never stop just because you feel defeated. The journey to the other side is attainable only after great suffering. — Santosh Kalwar

My God grant me love for that which has splendor, but in this time of my life let me strive for attainable things. — Pindar

In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by silence and by speech acting together, comes a double significance. In the symbol proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. — Thomas Carlyle

Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction. — Richard Matheson

The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. — John Buchan

The reaction has been amazing because there is no woman that could look at these covers and not be like, 'That's what I could look like,' or, 'I pretty much already look like one of these chicks.' It really makes beauty seem so much more attainable to people. — Ronda Rousey

Goals should be realistic, attainable, and shared among all members of the team — Mike Krzyzewski

I think the problem is that fashion has become too fashionable. For years, fashion wasn't fashionable. Today fashion is so fashionable that it's almost embarrassing to say you're part of fashion. All the parodies of it. All the dreadful magazines. That has destroyed it as well, because everybody thinks fashion is attainable. — Louise Wilson

To expel hunger and thirst there is no necessity of sitting in a palace and submitting to the supercilious brow and contumelious favour of the rich and great there is no necessity of sailing upon the deep or of following the camp What nature wants is every where to be found and attainable without much difficulty whereas require the sweat of the brow for these we are obliged to dress anew j compelled to grow old in the field and driven to foreign mores A sufficiency is always at hand — Seneca.

They [progressives] are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Set reasonable goals; not something vague and unrealistic like "I want to be super-model skinny." I always had visions of very thin actresses in my mind when I was at the gym and it seemed so unattainable that I would quit any health regimen before it even got off the ground. But when I changed my mindset to focusing on making the healthiest choices possible for myself, it was a lot more realistic, more attainable, and then the results were visible. — Alison Sweeney

Fame is a modern phenomenon caused by the explosion of media, where there's a zillion digital channels and snappers everywhere. It's so attainable, so people can have their Warhol 15 minutes of fame, and some are so aggressive. — Simon Fuller

I don't reckon there are many writers who start out really expecting writing to be an attainable occupation. Well, I didn't. It was a pipe dream. — Sarah Hall