Goal Making Quotes & Sayings

Learning from the successes and failures of others is key to making quantum leaps toward our goals. — Robin Crow

I was always into staying busy, into my goals, into making notes and planning. I'm not one who truly lives in the past. — Richard Simmons

A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism. — Allan Bloom

The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination ... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture. — Daniel Dennett

But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won't help you find the global maximum. — Peter Thiel

In an honest effort to gain understanding, asking questions do not, necessarily, imply a conclusion has been determined. They can be used to avoid making the wrong judgement. If building trust is the ultimate goal - there is no need to be defensive, or feel threatened by any inquiry. — T.F. Hodge

Our goal should be to make decision makers internalize the full consequences of their decisions, rather than prevent them from making decisions altogether [...] But we tend to reform under the delusion that the regulated institutions and the markets they operate in are static and passive, and that the regulatory environment will not vary with the cycle. Ironically, faith in draconian regulation is strongest at the bottom of the cycle, when there is little need for participants to be regulated. By contrast, the misconception that markets will govern themselves is most widespread at the top of the cycle, at the point of maximum danger to the system. We need to acknowledge these differences and enact cycle-proof regulation, for a regulation set against the cycle will not stand. To have a better chance of creating stability throughout the cycle--of being cycle-proof--new regulations should be comprehensive, nondiscretionary, contingent, and cost-effective. — Raghuram G. Rajan

Humans are great optimizers. We look at everything around us, whether a cow, a house, or a share portfolio, and ask ourselves how we can manage it to get the best return. Our modus operandi is to break the things we're managing down into its component parts and understand how each part functions and what inputs will yield the greatest outputs . . . [but] the more you optimize elements of a complex system of humans and nature for some specific goal, the more you diminish that system's resilience. A drive for efficient optimal state outcome has the effect of making the total system more vulnerable to shocks and disturbances. — Stanley McChrystal

Just before bedtime prayers, evaluate each day. Make plans for tomorrow that will move you toward your long-range goal. Strive for a close partnership with God in making your dreams come true. — Florence S. Jacobsen

In the rush of complex modern living, we have a tendency to laugh at the 'bring-Papa-his-pipe-and-slippers' approach to marriage - but most men are more than a little wistful at its demise. A man dreams of home as a haven and his wife as a romantic, fragrant creature whose most important goal in life is making him comfortable. — Arlene Dahl

A dream needs a powerful push to move into manifestation. You give it that power by making your dream as clear as possible in your mind, turning it into specific goal or goals, putting the goals into a time line and knowing what the culmination of that dream looks like. — Meera Lester

Making modern games funny would be easy as pie if it was anybody's goal to actually make a funny game. — Doug TenNapel

Don't succumb to excuses. Go back to the job of making the corrections and forming the habits that will make your goal possible. — Vince Lombardi

To the designer, great design is beautiful design. A significant amount of effort must be placed into making the product attractive. To the client, great design is effective. It must bring in customers and meet the goals put forth to the designer in the original brief. To the user, great design is functional. It's easy to read, easy to use and easy to get out of it what was promised Truly great design, then, is when these three perspectives are considered and implemented equally to create a final product that is beautiful, effective and functional. — Joshua Johnson

The more belief and confidence we feel toward achieving our goal, the higher the probability of our making the changes required to hit our targets. — Michael Hyatt

...the state of perfection is an elusive goal; demanding something so obscure as almost unattainable and can become a compulsive, crazy making squirrel-on-a-wheel way of living. — David W. Earle

You learn by trying, making mistakes, correcting and trying again and again until your reach the desired goal, which is rarely without effort, but is rather a reward for hard work. — Dante Alighieri

Just the responsibility of wanting to see my mother have a better life; making sure my sister had a better life. I went ahead and accepted that responsibility when I was young and it paid off. That was really the only goal. — Yo Gotti

If you are a person with victim mentality, start making decisions on your own and live using your own mind — Sunday Adelaja

I want to compliment the fraternity and sorority organizations for taking the time to meet with us and then removing their support from the legislation that would have been so counterproductive for a goal that I think we all share - and that is making campuses safer and the successful prosecution of people who commit serious crimes. So, good on them that they backed off, and we don't have to fight them. — Claire McCaskill

Approach any room with the goal of making it the most attractive and comfortable, the room you want to live in the most. — David Easton

Asked to give advice to a 13-year-old girl about how to lead her life, I say find something you love to do. The goal shouldn't be accumulating money. It might be making changes in the world, or in your country. — Karen DeCrow

A man-made thing that produces pleasure (and criticism) by somehow taping into the order of the universe is beautiful. Making beautiful things makes our lives worthwhile. My teacher, and one of the founders of the Pratt industrial design program, Rowena Reed Kostellow, said, "Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization." From a pragmatic point of view, for something to be beautiful, it has to work. In order to make this idea clearer I have combined the ideas of beauty and function into one word: Beautility. — Tucker Viemeister

I don't have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it. — John McLaughlin

FIFA's goal of making the world a better place through football cannot be achieved through our efforts alone - equally important is the power which every fan of the beautiful game has at their disposal. — Sepp Blatter

The goal of 'Data Detectives' is to spark the imagination of students around the globe by making them think about new technologies that will impact humanity in ways similar to language and art. — Rick Smolan

You see, during my pilgrimage it became increasingly apparent that I wasn't happy and I had to do something about it - stop making excuses. I realized that you don't have to jump through a series of complicated hoops to achieve a goal. You can just look at a mountain and get a connection with God; you don't have to understand the mountain to feel that. — Paulo Coelho

My goal has always been to inspire in them an ongoing love of learning. To awaken a feeling where their work is their passion, so that they never feel burdened or trapped by meeting their material needs, but instead thrive and experience wealth doing what they love while making a positive contribution to the world. To me that is the truest definition of success. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

For a human to win, it is not necessary for a horse to lose. You should not have to take things away from a horse or break him in fragments in order to train him; rather you should add to the horse. The goal should be making, not breaking. — Cherry Hill

A small laugh startled me and I looked over to see her actually smiling. Making her do that more often was a new goal. — Abbi Glines

My goal is to give young girls confidence in this world so they can be more like men in the decision-making process. — Jackee Harry

Please don't get me wrong here. I'm not making fun of old people. In fact I think that's the goal of everybody here tonite. We all want to be an old person someday. — Jeff Foxworthy

My primary goal is really to get people to open up and when they feel themselves contracting and collapsing to reduce that, and to know when that happens, "Oh, something's going on that's making me feel this way, and if I force my body open a bit, I will feel less powerless." — Amy Cuddy

I think that we scientists are seeking an understanding of the natural world. We come in various types - chemists and physicists and biologists and such - and we all have the same goal. We are making progress. — Sheldon Lee Glashow

People who thought of my journey as a physical ordeal or an act of courage ... missed the point. Courage and physical endurance were no more than useful items of equipment for me, like facility with languages or immunity to hepatitis. The goal was comprehension, and the only way to comprehend the world was by making myself vulnerable to it so that it could change me. The challenge was to lay myself open to everybody and everything that came my way. The prize was to change and grow big enough to feel one with the whole world. — Ted Simon

Really, I'm never much of a goal-setter. Whenever I've tried to make big, solid plans, they don't happen. I'm more into whatever the circumstances are that present themselves, making wise decisions around that. — Rose McIver

If you have a great love of singing, supported by others' fondness for your voice, then it is worth making every effort, of making every sacrifice, to achieve your goal. A great voice will easily find teachers who are willing to help a struggling young talent, and the ways of the Lord are infinite. — Andrea Bocelli

When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you're doing? You're chasing something that doesn't exist. You're making everyone around you miserable.
You're making yourself miserable. Perfection? There's about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can't lose to anybody, but it's not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It's the other times. It's all about your head, man.
-Brad Gilbert — Andre Agassi

As Licklider explained, the sensible goal was to create an environment in which humans and machines "cooperate in making decisions." In other words, they would augment each other. "Men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking. — Walter Isaacson

In particular, objectives like SMART goals often unlock a potential that people don't even realize they possess. The reason, in part, is because goal-setting processes like the SMART system force people to translate vague aspirations into concrete plans. The process of making a goal specific and proving it is achievable involves figuring out the steps it requires - or shifting that goal slightly, if your initial aims turn out to be unrealistic. Coming up with a timeline and a way to measure success forces a discipline onto the process that good intentions can't match. — Charles Duhigg

Only the foolish insist on making their own mistakes when they can learn from the mistakes of others. Only the wise will understand that success leaves clues, and those clues are there for you to use to achieve great things. — John Patrick Hickey

My ultimate goal is to create operating systems for myself that allow me to think as little as possible about the silly decisions you can make all day long - like what to eat or where we should meet - so I can focus on making real decisions. Because mental energy is a finite quantity. — Alexa Von Tobel

Whenever you're making an important decision, first ask if it gets you closer to your goals or farther away. — Jillian Michaels

The reckoning is how we walk into our story; the rumble is where we own it. The goal of the rumble is to get honest about the stories we're making up about our struggles, to revisit, challenge, and reality-check these narratives. — Brene Brown

Making college affordable is a really important goal, and my plan will work better than Senator [Bernie] Sanders' plan by everybody who has looked at it. — Hillary Clinton

Take a leap of faith right now and know that you can live the life of your dreams by making a positive decision. — Auliq Ice

When you're writing, it's all up to you, and you don't have to make any compromises. And when you're directing, there's this intense pleasure you get from working with all these really talented people, and pooling the efforts towards a common goal. I like all the aspects of film-making. — Henry Selick

In Murakami's short story 'The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day,' the main character is a writer. In describing the act of writing to a tightrope walker, he says, 'What a writer is *supposed* to do is observe and observe and observe again, and put off making judgments to the last possible moment.' I think that is a beautiful description of writing; it lets the world be, but also there is a moment, finally, of some kind of opinion. There is that moment, but to hold it off is a lovely and worthwhile goal. — Aimee Bender

I really believe in setting goals, no matter what it is: whether it's losing five pounds or making the world championship team. — Dara Torres

We're a people at war,' she began, voice loud and clear. 'We're constantly attacked - but not just by Strigoi. By one another. We're divided. We fight with one another. Family against family. Royal against non-royal. Moroi against dhampir. Of course the Strigoi are picking us off. They're at least united behind a goal: killing.'
[ ... ]
'We are one people,' she continued. 'Moroi and dhampir alike.' Yeah, that got some gasps too. 'And while it's impossible for every single person to get their way, no one will get anything done if we don't come together and find ways to meet in the middle - even if it means making hard choices.'
[ ... ]
We've kept magic alongside technology. We conduct these sessions with scrolls and - with these.' She smiled and tapped her microphone. 'That's how we have survived. We hold onto our That's how we have survived. That's how we will survive. — Richelle Mead

I don't really set personal goals for home runs or anything like that. However many I hit, I hit. If I'm making consistent contact and hitting the ball hard, then I will hit home runs. — Justin Morneau

Success is like a camera. Just focus and concentrate on the objective. See what is your most important goal image for success, and ignore distracting details. Develop your pictures. If they don't turn out, keep at it. Take more shots and be persistent. Focus on making success clearly happen. Use perseverance. — Mark LaMoure

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine. — Jim Afremow

Focus on making yourself better, not thinking you are better. — Bohdi Sanders

There's always gonna be people with a lot of money making film, and the goal is to make profit and carry on. It is a business. The goal is to make a living doing it and to be comfortable. — Clint Howard

Begin your new year by making a commitment to yourself. Rediscover your passion. What sets your heart on fire? And do something about it. Take action. Today. Now. — Julie Connor

Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here. — George Friedman

Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry, alternatively, as Chaplin does - now that's the highest of all personal achievements. I don't know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal. — Elliott Erwitt

Success is like a camera. Focus and concentrate on the objective. See your most important goal image for success, and ignore distracting details. Develop your pictures. If they don't turn out, keep at it. Take more shots and be persistent. Focus on making success clearly happen. Visualize optimum success and use perseverance. — Mark LaMoure

I will guarantee you that the day you step outside your comfort zone by making success your goal is the day you discover that adversity, risk, and daring will make life sweeter than you ever imagined. — Mark Burnett

Lester Levenson used to say, 'Release and allow yourself to see the perfection where the seeming imperfection seems to be.' During this process, welcome your thoughts, your sensations, your feelings, and the stories that you tell yourself. Just allow them all to be here, and know that everything is okay as it is. Part of what happens when we release this is that we start to recognize the perfection underlying our thoughts and feelings. Begin by making yourself comfortable and focusing your attention inwardly. Now, bring to mind ... an issue that's currently up in your awareness. As you think about that situation, problem, intention, or goal, allow yourself to get in touch with your feelings about it right in this very moment.
— Hale Dwoskin

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

The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn't working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you're doing is playing the victim. — Robin S. Sharma

It is a better to have your own plan to make it happen;
Since something is going to happen either way. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

Read good writing, and don't live in the present. Live in the deep past, with the language of the Koran or the Mabinogion or Mother Goose or Dickens or Dickinson or Baldwin or whatever speaks to you deeply. Literature is not high school and it's not actually necessary to know what everyone around you is wearing, in terms of style, and being influenced by people who are being published in this very moment is going to make you look just like them, which is probably not a good long-term goal for being yourself or making a meaningful contribution. At any point in history there is a great tide of writers of similar tone, they wash in, they wash out, the strange starfish stay behind, and the conches. — Rebecca Solnit

Avoid openly trying to reform people. Every man knows he is imperfect, but he doesn't want someone else trying to correct his faults. If you want to improve a person, help him embrace a higher working goal-a standard, an ideal-and he will do his own 'making over' far more effectively than you can do it for him. — David Packard

My goal is to make furniture that people can be comfortable living with. If you're not preoccupied with making an impact with your designs, chances are something that looks good today will look good tomorrow. — Sam Maloof

Knowing your purpose on earth is simple, but the task here is to bring about the success of your destiny. — Michael Bassey Johnson

It always has been a goal of mine to compete in the Olympics. Right after I graduated from college, I moved out to Salt Lake City with my mind focused on making the 2014 team. — Brittany Bowe

The goal of medicine is peculiarly, the goal of making itself unneccessary: of influencing life so that what is medicine today becomes mere commonsense tomorrow. — Adolf Meyer

I just like to act and write and produce. To me, making movies is the ultimate goal. — Jonah Hill

In the end I have to hold myself accountable ... I had to make a change if I really wanted to reach the goals I had set for myself. I had to get out of being comfortable and get into a situation that was going to really push me. — Kara Goucher

What matters is 'Have you done a better job of making our experiences feel like home on Windows?' That's our real goal, and that's what we're going to stay focused on. — Satya Nadella

Democrats are making it clear that they intend to use our economic crisis to rush through their longtime liberal goals without public scrutiny or debate ... This will increase burdens on taxpayers and take a significant step toward socialized medicine. — Jim DeMint

I believe in giving kindness, regardless of how unreasonable and self-centered a person is. Kindness is a gift of sanctity for a person. It has the goal of making the soul smile. — Lionel Suggs

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground. — Madeleine Albright

The strength of a team is in making up for each other's weaknesses. United they can attain a goal in time. — Sunday Adelaja

Never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last. — Mike Markkula

I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his kneeguards, the gloves protruding from the hip pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender. Photographers, reverently bending one knee, snap him in the act of making a spectacular dive across the goal mouth to deflect with his fingertips a low, lightning-like shot, and the stadium roars in approval as he remains for a moment or two lying full length where he fell, his goal still intact. — Vladimir Nabokov

There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Perfection may be an impossible goal, but habits help us to do better. Making headway toward a good habit, doing better than before, saves us from facing the end of another year with the mournful wish, once again, that we'd done things differently. — Gretchen Rubin

It depends on the way you shoot it. It's something I don't really control. The main goal is to make a funny movie, but then I let my mind go. I get lost sometimes in the writing, trying to find some special zones. That's the excitement of making a movie. — Quentin Dupieux

Having a set of goals is a good thing for many people. But when a goal takes your focus off God and His daily intentions for you, it can cause trouble. Being driven by my plans can shift the focus of my heart from following God and being open to His unfolding invitations, to following only that which leads me closer to my desires. For me, I started falling into a trap of making plans each day around what I wanted to see happen. Anything that wasn't part of my plan became a distraction and an unwelcome interruption. — Lysa TerKeurst

Ed Koch will never 'rest in peace.' That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say, 'It's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax.' — Alan Dershowitz

Our goal in making these changes is to enable Microsoft to achieve greater agility in managing the incredible growth ahead and executing our software-based services strategy. — Steve Ballmer

I usually work with the director and it's just a collaboration between me and the one person. I think you make good movies that way. If the director and the composer can have this common goal and this excitement about making something great, then you're going to do something good. — Howard Shore

Parents do overindulge their children, giving them a profusion of material things ... without the stabilizing effects of earning one's way, of making decisions, of sweating hard to attain some kind of goal, young people are grievously handicapped. — Billy Graham

Hollywood was all about. Hollywood was merely a specialized bank - a consortium of large financial entities that hired talent, almost always for a flat rate, ordered that talent to create a product, and then marketed that product to death, all over the world, in every conceivable medium. The goal was to find products that would keep on making money forever, long after the talent had been paid off and sent packing. — Neal Stephenson

Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on - but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal. — Ed Catmull

I trained in martial arts and wanted to become a UFC fighter. That was my goal. I only really learned how to dance three weeks prior to making 'Step Up Revolution.' Dancing will always be fun, but MMA is something I'll never give up. I will eventually get back in the octagon and be fighting professionally again. — Ryan Guzman

I'll continue making films because I love being able to drop into other people's worlds. My goal is to be constantly learning. — Jehane Noujaim

Making loans accessible to millions of the previously unbankable customers is a noble goal. Getting them hooked to such loans isn't. — Evgeny Morozov

This primary question of life organization is immensely important. If making money is the main goal, a person can often forget what his or her true interests are or how he or she wants to deserve recognition from others. It is much more difficult to add on other values to a life that started out with just making money in mind than it is to make some personally interesting endeavor financially possible or even profitable. — Pekka Himanen

My goal should never be to raise kids that make me look good. (Oh but how my flesh craves this!) My goal should be to raise kids who love God and spend their lives making His goodness known in their corner of the world. — Lysa TerKeurst

When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years. — John Waters

A basic framework for happiness:

- Time spent daily, hopefully in a job that challenges us, but also in our after-hours hobbies.

- An ability to show ourselves that we are making consistent progress and improvements toward a specified goal.

- Energy and attention dedicated each day to an activity that puts us in the zone. — Steve Kamb

Move before you think you are ready. It is as if you are making it a little more difficult for yourself, deliberately creating obstacles in your path When you feel that you must work harder to get to your goal because you are not quite prepared, you are more alert and inventive. This venture has to succeed and so it will. — Curtis Jackson

Sky is the limit, never doubt yourself, stay focused, never let anything slow or stop you from concurring your goals and making your dreams happen! — Myles Jury

The goal in life is the same as in basketball: make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing
in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country. Make the effort to contribute in whatever way you can. You may do it materially or with time, ideas, or work. Making the effort to contribute is what counts. The effort is what counts in everything. — John Wooden