Born To Achieve Quotes & Sayings

We are born into this precious human existence to achieve the uni cation of opposites and become enlightened, or liberated, from the illusion of separation. — Dashama Konah Gordon

I was born with the wrong body, being feminine by gender but male by sex, and I could achieve completeness only when the one was adjusted to the other. — Jan Morris

We cannot control the temperaments we are born with; they are God's choice. We can work with the Holy Spirit to achieve balance, but basically we are who we are. — Joyce Meyer

How many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads, walls, pylons? Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them? — J.M. Coetzee

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

I know that our efforts all come to nothing. I know the end of us all is nothing, I know that at the end of Time, the reward of our toil will be nothing - and again nothing. I know that all our handiwork will be destroyed. I know that not even ash will be left from the fires that consume us. I know that our ideals, even those we achieve, will vanish in the eternal darkness of oblivion and final non-being. There is no hope, none, in my heart. No promise, none, can I make to myself and to others. No recompense can I expect for my labors. No fruit will be born of my thoughts. The Future - eternal seducer of all men, eternal cause of all effects - offers me nothing but the blank prospect of annihilation. — Giovanni Papini

I want to be known as 'The Big Shakespeare.' It was Shakespeare that said, 'Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them.' — Shaquille O'Neal

Leaders aren't born, they are made. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal which is worthwhile. — Vince Lombardi Jr.

Human beings are no longer born to their place in life, and chained down by an inexorable bond to the place they are born to, but are free to employ their faculties, and such favourable chances as offer, to achieve the lot which may appear to them most desirable. — John Stuart Mill

Most people have a perception that winners are born great. Winners aren't born great. They have become great by the virtue of doing a little extra to achieve greatness. That little extra effort accumulates to one day giving them the winning results when compared to the ordinary efforts of others. — Kevin Abdulrahman

America was born modern; it did not have to achieve modernity, nor did it have modernity thrust upon it. — Ernest Gellner

Freedom is not just something with which we are born; it is something we achieve. America did not receive a perpetual endowment of freedom; it has had to struggle and fight to preserve it. Freedom is not an heirloom or an antique; it is a life that must fight against the corrosive powers of death and nourish itself on the daily bread of goodness and virtue. — Fulton J. Sheen

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. — Vince Lombardi

The most impoverished peasant can be delighted by the opening of the first spring flower, and the most wealthy aristocrat can curse the day he was born because of some petty offense to his sensibilities. She is a very wise woman. To achieve serenity we have to view life not as it is measured by the world around us but as we ourselves measure it. We must accept that the scales are not at all equal. — Emma Wildes

Some people are born to command. Some people achieve command. And others have command thrust upon them ... — Terry Pratchett

Everyone is born with a certain potential. You may never achieve your full potential, but how close you come depends on how much you want to pay the price. — Red Auerbach

It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. — Ralph Ellison

You were born to achieve, to release your inner power, to fulfill your uniqueness. — Eric Butterworth

You're not ever going to get it done. Every time you evaluate contrast and conclude and then line up your Energy and allow it into your experience ... at the same time you are achieving the result that you intended, you also achieve a new perspective from which to intend. You can't stand still. In every moment, there is a whole new set of stuff ... new ideas, new desires being born. — Esther Hicks

Fame had been democratized. During most of history only members of the privileged classes had possessed a realistic opportunity to achieve majestic fame, but in the eighteenth century it has been demonstrated repeatedly, by men such as Franklin, for instance, that fame might be achieved by men born into a lesser social rank. — John Ferling

Some are born Welsh. Some achieve Welshness. I am going to thrust myself upon Wales. — Jasper Rees

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But - I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve. — Clarice Lispector

I need to check your ankle."
"Ask."
"If you object, I - "
"Giving me a chance to object is not the same as asking permission. You're used to telling people what to do. That works with those guards you're in charge of. You aren't in charge of me. You have to ask."
One corner of his mouth turned up. "It's more efficient my way."
"If your primary goal in life is efficiency, you should just die."
That startled him. His head actually jerked back. "What?"
"The most efficient way to live a life is to die a couple seconds after you're born. Pfft. Done." She dusted her hands to demonstrate that. "It's too late for you to achieve optimal efficiency, but you could still ... — Eileen Wilks

How much better would it now be to win friends, pacify enemies, serve your country, turn your attention to private affairs, than to look around to see what harm you can do to some individual, what wound you can inflict on his good name, or his finances, or his person, though you cannot achieve this end without a dangerous struggle, even if your opponent is lower-born than you! — Seneca.

In simple words, whatever you were born to do, you were equipped to do it. You are a whole equipment for success! — Israelmore Ayivor

We are born with a potential for good character - and for the dispositions and habits that make up bad or weak character. Because we are born in ignorance of moral ideals, however, we must be instructed or trained if we are to achieve a good second nature. — Edwin J. Delattre

Each one of us has a purpose in this life. We are born not just to pay the bills and live an unremarkable existence. We are born to hone our talents and to lead a passionate life! And when we combine our talents with service to others, we achieve the ultimate goal of our existence - Ecstasy of the Soul! — Avijeet Das

In the Great War, there is no room for the faint-hearted, the cowardly. A criminal or an anarchist will be better conditioned than a bourgeois, indecisive or cowardly man. They only need a push in the right direction. Only one who is born a hero or a warrior has a place in our order. Only the Lord of the Pure Will can march to the end, breaking in the gates of the City of Eternal Life. Because will, through its perseverance, creates the thing it contemplates. Only the Wild Hordes of Odin and Parsifal will achieve the Graal. — Miguel Serrano

The question that faces every man born into this world is not what should be his purpose, which he should set about to achieve, but just what to do with life? The answer, that he should order his life so that he can find the greatest happiness in it, is more a practical question, similar to that of how a man should spend his weekend, then a metaphysical proposition as to what is the mystic purpose of his life in the scheme of the universe. — Lin Yutang

There are eight levels of wizardry on the Disc; after sixteen years Rincewind has failed to achieve even level one. In fact it is considered opinion of some of his tutors that he is incapable even of achieving level zero, which most normal people are born at; to put it another way, it has been suggested that when Rincewind dies the average occult ability of the human race will actually go up by a fraction. — Terry Pratchett

For the first billion years, the universe continued to expand and cool as matter gravitated into the massive concentrations we call galaxies. Nearly a hundred billion of them formed, each containing hundreds of billions of stars that undergo thermonuclear fusion in their cores. Those stars with more than about ten times the mass of the Sun achieve sufficient pressure and temperature in their cores to manufacture dozens of elements heavier than hydrogen, including those that compose planets and whatever life may thrive upon them. These elements would be stunningly useless were they to remain where they formed. But high-mass stars fortuitously explode, scattering their chemically enriched guts throughout the galaxy. After nine billion years of such enrichment, in an undistinguished part of the universe (the outskirts of the Virgo Supercluster) in an undistinguished galaxy (the Milky Way) in an undistinguished region (the Orion Arm), an undistinguished star (the Sun) was born. The — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Every man's penis is the prettiest thing in the world to him. From the day he's born until the day he dies. It never loses its endless fascination. And, I kid you not, baby, the same is true of every woman and her pussy. It's the closest thing to a real, blind, helpless love and religious adoration that most people ever achieve. But they'd rather die than admit it. Homosexuality, the urge to kill, petty spites and treacheries, fantasies of sadism, masochism, transvestism, any weird thing you can name, they'll confess all that in a group therapy session. But that deep submerged constant narcissism, that perpetual mental masturbation, is the earliest and most powerful block. They'll never admit it. — Robert Shea

The problem was the liars. They said she could do anything she set her mind to, they told her she should shoot for the moon because if she missed she'd be among the stars, they made movies tricking her into thinking she could achieve heroic things. All lies. Because she was born to answer phones in call centers, to carry bags to customers' cars, to punch a clock, to measure her life in smoke breaks. To think otherwise was insane. — Grady Hendrix

Never underestimate your own strength. You were born for a purpose and are blessed with the power to achieve it. — Leon Brown

Freedom is born of self-discipline. No individual, no nation, can achieve or maintain liberty without self-control. The undisciplined man (or woman) is a slave to his own weaknesses. — Alan Valentine

She had no right to live there. She doesn't belong there. It took those people a long time to build that country; hundreds of years, years and years of war and bloodshed. Everyone who lives there has earned his right to be there with blood: with their brother's blood and their father's blood and their son's blood. They know they're a nation because they have drawn their borders with blood. Regimental flags hang in their cathedrals and all their churches are lined with memorials to men who died in wars, all around the world. War is their religion. That's what it takes to make a country. Once that happens people forget they were born this or that, Muslim or Hindu, Bengali or Punjabi: they become a family born of the same pool of blood. That is what you have to achieve for India, don't you see? — Amitav Ghosh

At the same time, if we were feeling a knot of guilt about our decision re: dying, it might have been because we regretted our failure to achieve a certain kind of wisdom born from certain kinds of life experiences...Our skittishness when it came to any crisis, the preference we had for deflecting important conversations with jokes, rather than facing them head-on. It was fine, we agreed, not to want to grow old. Fine, too, to take steps to ensure we didn't grow old. But we'd also avoided growing up. We'd lived our lives like perpetual children, hiding in corners, never knowing what to say, never knowing what to do. If our plan to die was problematic, it was problematic in that it eliminated the possibility of our ever becoming serious, capable women. — Judith Claire Mitchell

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight. — Richard Price

A fitly born and bred race, growing up in right conditions of outdoor as much as indoor harmony, activity and development, would probably, from and in those conditions, find it enough merely to live - and would, in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, etc., and to the countless common shows, and in the fact of life itself, discover and achieve happiness - with Being suffused night and day by wholesome ecstasy, surpassing all the pleasures that wealth, amusement, and even gratified intellect, erudition, or the sense of art, can give. — Walt Whitman

Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian. — Arthur E. Bostwick

A person who sins neither in thought nor deed, and is fair and just, gains enormous courage and strength. As a leader, you need courage born of integrity in order to be capable of powerful leadership. To achieve this courage, you must search your heart, and make sure your conscience is clear and your behavior is beyond reproach. — Konosuke Matsushita

Our brain is a circuit board with neurons and terminals ready to be wired. We are born free, then programmed to obey our parents, to tell the truth, pass exams, pursue and achieve, love and propagate, age and fade unfulfilled and uncertain what it has all been for. We swallow the operating system with our mother's milk and sleepwalk into the forest of consumer illusion craving shoes, houses, cars, magazines, experiences that endorse our preconceived dreams and opinions. We grow into our parents. We becomes clones, robots, matchstick men thinking and saying the same, feeling the same, behaving the same, appreciating in books and films and art shows those things we already recognize and understand. — Chloe Thurlow

Some women are born to be married, some achieve marriage, and others have marriage thrust upon them. — Myrtle Reed

I think you are talented and passionate, Isabella. More than you think and less than you expect. But there are a lot of people with talent and passion, and many of them never get anywhere. This is only the first step for achieving anything in life. Natural talent is like an athlete's strength. You can be born with more or less ability, but nobody can become an athlete just because he or she was born tall, or strong, or fast. What makes the athlete, or the artist, is the work, the vocation and the technique. The intelligence you are born with is just ammunition. To achieve something with it you need to transform your mind into a high-precision weapon. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We each were endowed at birth with a unique gift, something we were born to do or become that no one else can achieve the way we can. God's purpose is that we bear abundant fruit and release the blessings of our gift and potential to the world. — Myles Munroe

Born to be some body. You were born to be some body, maybe a vet, maybe a hero, maybe a care giver. What ever it is you were born to be some thing special and if you believe you can achieve — Justin Bieber

Some girls are apparently born with dates; some through much personal activity, achieve them; but others seem by necessity to have dates thrust upon them. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I encourage all of you to find strength within yourself, no matter what. Be proud of who you are and never let anyone or anything take that away from you. Inner Strength is something that we are all born with. However, I've learned that it requires patience and perseverance to fully achieve it. I promise you, though, that as long as you know in your heart who you are and what you want from this world, nothing is gonna stop you. — Andy Biersack

I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening - a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation. I have little doubt that as individuals, families, communities, and even nations, we have the capacity to learn how to heal and prevent much of the damage done by trauma. In so doing, we will significantly increase our ability to achieve both our individual and collective dreams. — Peter A. Levine

Because it is a national landmark, there is only one way to judge the Kennedy Center - against the established standard of progressive and innovative excellence in architectural design that this country is known and admired for internationally. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Center not only does not achieve this standard of innovative excellence; it also did not seek it. The architect opted for something ambiguously called 'timelessness' and produced meaninglessness. It is to the Washington manner born. Too bad, since there is so much of it. — Ada Louise Huxtable

It is a test," Hugh repeated adamantly. "The trio must show themselves to be worthy." "Then what's my test?" Jordan pressed. "You already passed it. In the forest, you sacrificed yourself without a fight, proving you were a Warrior who could achieve his goals through peace and nonviolence." "Then what about my test?" Rhun asked. "It came with you." Hugh bowed his head toward the cub. "You, a Knight of Christ, took pity and mercy on a creature you believed to be born of darkness, defying the edicts of your order to kill it on sight. For such mercy, you came away with a miracle of light and grace. — James Rollins

Here's a message to the new borns, waiting to breathe: if you believe then you can achieve. Just look at me, against all odds 'though life is hard, we carry on, livin' in the projects, broke with no lights on. To all the seeds that follow me- protect your essence, born with less, but you still precious. — Tupac Shakur

We are born creators, here to achieve the exuberant expression of our gifts. The — Charles Eisenstein

To win, you have to believe you will win. — Lailah Gifty Akita

You can be slum-born and slum-bred and still achieve something worth while; but it is a stupid inverted snobbishness to be proud of it. If one had a right to be proud of anything, it would be of a continued decent tradition back of one. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

With due apologies to Shakespeare, some people are born writers, some people achieve it after a lot of hard work, some people have a writing career thrust upon them. I am in that last group. — Amish Tripathi

The fact that their [the flower children's] uniforms and their jargons precisely represented the distances they had yet to cover before arriving at that maturity which makes love possible - or no longer possible - could not be considered their fault. They had been born into a society in which nothing was harder to achieve, in which perhaps nothing was more scorned and feared than the idea of the soul's maturity. — James Baldwin

Humans look just like livestock now. We achieve a state of buttery plumpness before we've even reached sexual maturity. We experience powerful cravings for food that is slowly making us sick. We are...programmed to eat the wrong food. We aren't born calorie zombies, but that's what we have become. — Mark Schatzker

Anyone can achieve their fullest potential, who we are might be predetermined, but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. We should never allow our fears or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. Your destiny can't be changed but, it can be challenged. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. — Martin Heidegger

The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you. — Maya Angelou

He wanted to achieve something of surpassing beauty that would last. A creation that would mean that he
the mosaic worker Caius Crispus of Varena
had been born, and lived a life, and had come to understand a portion of the nature of the world, of what ran through and beneath the deeds of women and men in their souls and in the beauty and the pain of their short living beneath the sun. — Guy Gavriel Kay

In order to survive, an animal must be born into a favoring or at least tolerant environment. Similarly, in order to achieve preservation and recognition, a specimen of fossil man must be discovered in intelligence, attested by scientific knowledge, and interpreted by evolutionary experience. These rigorous prerequisites have undoubtedly caused many still-births in human palaeontology and are partly responsible for the high infant mortality of discoveries of geologically ancient man. — Earnest Hooton

I think, Sir, my potential got a hell of a thumping when I happened to be born where I was born with the parents I got'.

Your potential boy, is what you achieve regardless of unavoidable disadvantages, what what you can conveniently call upon as an excuse for intellectual lethary, or the lesser, and in most cases forgivable, crime of failure. — David Logan

So you can't make a living as a novelist - why not try farming or teaching? Or even begging - what difficulties would that present? Were you born into the world to make a living? Or have you another aim, that of becoming a novelist or something akin? If you want to become a novelist but are worried about how you will eat, then let me share my bowl of rice with you (though
I am not as well off as I once was). If, in return, you become a great novelist,
it will be my greatest joy. . . . I do not presume to urge you to become a novelist. I say only this - be firm of purpose and don't worry about trivialities.

And remember the saying: the final tax you pay to achieve your goal is your life. — Masaoka Shiki

We were not born into this life knowing
that we were going to become
rich or poor, striving or with a celeb status, sick or healthy.
But one thing that I know is that
the human mind is a powerful tool to achieve success. No matter the circumstances,
greatness is when you push
yourself above the odds. — Henry Johnson Jr

Immortality is what nature possesses without effort and without anybody's assistance, and immortality is what the mortals must therefore try to achieve if they want to live up to the world into which they were born, to live up to the things which surround them and to whose company they are admitted for a short while. — Hannah Arendt

By birth, certainly, they were not prepared in any way to achieve their desires. They were not the smartest kids in the neighborhood. They were not born the richest. They weren't even the toughest. In fact, they lacked almost all the necessary talents that might have helped them satisfy the appetites of their dreams, except one - their talent for violence. — Nicholas Pileggi

We are a people of the frontier, born to it, bred to it, looking always toward it. And when the frontiers of our own land are gone, when we have drawn them all into an ordered world, then we must seek other frontiers, the frontiers of the mind beyond which men have not gone, the frontiers that lie out beyond the stars, the frontiers that lie within our own selves, that hold us back from what we would do, what we would achieve. — Louis L'Amour

Dickens was born in 1812 and died in 1870, having produced fifteen novels, many of which can confidently be called great, as well as having accomplished outstanding work in activities into which his insatiable need to expend his vast energies - to achieve, to prevail - carried him: journalism, editing, acting, social reform. — Robert Gottlieb