Quotes & Sayings About Great Achievements

America ... has created a 'civilization' that represents an exact contradiction of the ancient European tradition. It has introduced the religion of praxis and productivity; it has put the quest for profit, great industrial production, and mechanical, visible, and quantitative achievements over any other interest. It has generated a soulless greatness of a purely technological and collective nature, lacking any background of transcendence, inner light, and true spirituality. America has [built a society where] man becomes a mere instrument of production and material productivity within a conformist social conglomerate — Julius Evola

Ted Baillieu certainly has served the state very well. He has served the Liberal party extraordinarily well, and he can be very, very proud of his achievements. I am honoured and proud to say that he is not just a colleague, he is a great friend. — Denis Napthine

Let us march past the flag of the past, saluting our achievements', pondering over our mistakes and thinking of the lessons for the way forward as we march forward to a great tomorrow — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A win gives one a feeling of self-affirmation, and success - a feeling of self-expression, but only a sensible harmonization between these urges can bring really great achievements in chess. — Oleg Romanishin

One great concern that plagues very ambitious people is this: in the end, they'll get all the precious things they ever dreamed of and every precious accomplishment most expected and conceived they'd achieve . . . but on that path of ambition, they'd lose precious moments with the most precious people they've come across. However, they forge ahead on that path hoping, somehow, they might make up for it, sometime, in future. — Ufuoma Apoki

Science and technology have been embarrassed by two world wars, many smaller ones, and the spread of weapons that could destroy humanity. As a result, there is some loss of confidence in the great achievements of technology. — Thomas Keating

Why be an average person? All the great achievements of history have been made by strong individuals who refused to consult statistics or to listen to those who could prove convincingly that what they wanted to do, and in fact ultimately did do, was completely impossible. — Eric Butterworth

I'm not sure my achievements have been 'great.' — Sally Phillips

Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring) — Lisa Kleypas

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary. — Agatha Christie

All great achievements require time. Maya Angelou — Kim Thompson-Pinder

Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working. — Oscar Wilde

The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given. — Jan Peter Balkenende

If there is one thing I know, it's that with every great achievement in our lives, there is an insecure idiot hiding around the corner waiting to take a baseball bat to it. — Dan Pearce

A little wisdom can lead to great understanding.
A little curiosity can lead to great discoveries.
A little talent can lead to great achievements.
A little love can lead to great virtue.
A little faith can lead to great miracles.
A little opportunity can lead to great success. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. — Orison Swett Marden

The great scientific achievements are research programmes which can be evaluated in terms of progressive and degenerative problemshifts; and scientific revolutions consist of one research programme superceding (overtaking in progress) another. This methodology offers a new rational reconstruction of science. — Imre Lakatos

We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and adored wife for fifty-five years of the late and much missed Charles Alden Black. — Shirley Temple

What a great treasure can be hidden in a small, selected library! A company of the wisest and the most deserving people from all the civilized countries of the world, for thousands of years, can make the results of their studies and their wisdom available to us. The thought which they might not even reveal to their best friends is written here in clear words for us, people from another century. Yes, we should be grateful for the best books, for the best spiritual achievements in our lives. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON — Leo Tolstoy

Great achievements are nothing more than a collection of small accomplishments. — Justin Young

As we're told that 10 percent of all high school education will be computer-based by 2014 and rise to 50 percent by 2019, and as the PowerPoint throws up aphoristic bromides by the corporate heroes of the digitally driven 'global economy'
the implication being that 'great companies' know what they're doing, while most schools don't
and as we're goaded mercilessly to the conclusion that everything we are, know, and do is bound for the dustbin of history, I want to ask what kind of schooling Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had. Wasn't it at bottom the very sort of book-based, content-driven education that we declare obsolete in the name of their achievements? — Garret Keizer

We have either to progress or to degenerate. Our ancestors did great things in the past, but we have to grow into a fuller life and march beyond even their great achievements. — Swami Vivekananda

I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among "real" mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as "useless" as the theory of numbers. — G.H. Hardy

Buddhist scriptures recommend that you hide your good qualities and achievements like a lamp inside a vessel. You should not advertise them unless there is great purpose in doing so. — Dalai Lama XIV

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures. — Robert Penn Warren

The immortality of Thomas Jefferson does not lie in any one of his achievements, or in the series of his achievements, but in his attitude towards mankind and the conception which he sought to realize in action of the service owed by America to the rest of the world ... Thomas Jefferson was a great leader of men because he understood and interpreted the spirits of men. — Woodrow Wilson

Every time I create something, whether an idea or a work of art, initially, its supposed completion seems absolutely perfect to me. However the more I think about it, stare it down, the more it marinates in my soul over the hours, days, and weeks, the more flaws I start to find in it; and finally, the more I'm pressed to continue enhancing it. It essentially turns out that whatever thing a flawed and imperfect, human eye once thought was amazing begins to appear quite wretched. This is why, eternally, God cannot be impressed by mere talents or by mortal achievements. To perfect eyes, I imagine that great is not really that great; rather, humility is ultimately a human being's true greatness. — Criss Jami

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. — Milton Friedman

Jazz is a music of great achievements but speed and chops serve a different function in jazz. — Marc Ribot

Phidias and the achievements of Greek art are foreshadowed in Homer: Dante prefigures for us the passion and colour and intensity of Italian painting: the modern love of landscape dates from Rousseau, and it is in Keats that one discerns the beginning of the artistic renaissance of England. Byron was a rebel and Shelley a dreamer; but in the calmness and clearness of his vision, his perfect self-control, his unerring sense of beauty and his recognition of a separate realm for the imagination, Keats was the pure and serene artist, the forerunner of the pre-Raphaelite school, and so of the great romantic movement of which I am to speak. — Oscar Wilde

New standards for safety are now in place and Canada has helped provide tools and techniques that were needed. Technologies like these are innovative and represent great achievements for us. — Marc Garneau

Nearly all the great improvements, discoveries, inventions, and achievements which have elevated and blessed humanity have been the triumphs of enthusiasm. — Orison Swett Marden

All the great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of art
by adjusting efforts to obstacles. — Napoleon Bonaparte

All great achievements have one thing in common - people with a passion to succeed — Pat Cash

General theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. They are the great intellectual achievements of the first half of this century. — Stephen Hawking

Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is, to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

There remain a few people in NASA who are there to accomplish great things; but most of NASA now consists of the people who accomplished the extraordinary feat of making mankind's greatest achievements look dull, then making it impossible to repeat them.Yet what man has done man can aspire to. About light I am in the dark. — Benjamin Franklin

Human beings who leave behind them no great achievements, but only a series of small kindnesses, have not had wasted lives — Charlotte Gray

We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society. — Hanya Yanagihara

I said to myself that maturity consisted in accepting the turn that existence had taken without getting too upset, following a path between daily practices and theoretical achievements, learning to see oneself, know oneself, in expectation of great changes. — Elena Ferrante

Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all. — Albert Einstein

While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. — Albert Einstein

Mind is nothing but dreams and dreams - dreams of the past, dreams of the future, dreams of how things should be, dreams of great ambitions, achievements. Dreams and desires, that is the stuff mind is made of. But it surrounds you like a China Wall. And because of it the fish remains unaware of the ocean. — Rajneesh

Every man aims at avoiding what causes him pain; the activities of government ultimately consist in the infliction of pain. All great achievements of mankind were the product of a spontaneous effort on the part of individuals; government substitutes coercion for voluntary action. — Ludwig Von Mises

The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty — Jack London

Who thinks his great achievements poor
Shall find his vigour long endure.
Of greatest fulness, deemed a void,
Exhaustion ne'er shall stem the tide.
Do thou what's straight still crooked deem;
Thy greatest art still stupid seem,
And eloquence a stammering scream. — Lao-Tzu

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mechanical and social achievements of our day must not blind our eyes to the fact that, in all that relates to man, his nature and aspirations, we have added little or nothing to what has been so finely said by the great men of old. — James Loeb

Gonna Be One Of The Great Achievements Of This Administration — Joe Biden

Our time prides itself on having finally achieved the freedom from censorship for which libertarians in all ages have struggled ... The credit for these great achievements is claimed by the new spirit of rationalism, a rationalism that, it is argued, has finally been able to tear from man's eyes the shrouds imposed by mystical thought, religion, and such powerful illusions as freedom and dignity. Science has given us this great victory over ignorance. But, on closer examination, this victory too can be seen as an Orwellian triumph of an even higher ignorance: what we have gained is a new conformism, which permits us to say anything that can be said in the functional languages of instrumental reason, but forbids us to allude to ... the living truth ... so we may discuss the very manufacture of life and its 'objective' manipulations, but we may not mention God, grace, or morality. — Joseph Weizenbaum

If your aims are lofty, your achievements are bound to be great. — Radhe Maa

A child in his earliest years, when he is only two or a little more, is capable of tremendous achievements simply through his unconscious power of absorption, though he is himself still immobile. After the age of three he is able to acquire a great number of concepts through his own efforts in exploring his surroundings. In this period he lays hold of things through his own activity and assimilates them into his mind. — Maria Montessori

History sometimes reproduces, at a distance of many years, the same combinations of circumstances that generate great achievements. But nothing ever repeats itself in exactly the same way. — Valerio Massimo Manfredi

The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past. — Alfred North Whitehead

The George Washington Masonic National Memorial is a fitting tribute to so great a man and Mason. Its message should be as prominent in our lives as the Memorial itself in the skyline of the Federal City. Wherever we are, in Alexandria, Virginia, the District of Columbia of should be in our moral horizon, beckoning us to greater achievements as citizens and Masons. — Henry Clausen

To a great extent the achievements of invention, of mechanical and of artistic creation, must of necessity, and rightly, be individual rather than governmental. It is the self-reliant pioneer in every enterprise who beats the path along which American civilization has marched. Such individual effort is the glory of America. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Daisy," Westcliff said gently, "most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without Daisy Bowman in it. — Lisa Kleypas

One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. — Steven Weinberg

Margaret Thatcher was beyond argument a great Prime Minister. Her tragedy is that she may be remembered less for the brilliance of her many achievements than for the recklessness with which she later sought to impose her own increasingly uncompromising views. — Geoffrey Howe

I am very optimistic about
about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government, — Joe Biden

Humanistic values of equality and equal rights for all nations and individuals as crystallized in the principles of the United Nations Charter are mankind's great achievements in the 20th century. — Tran Duc Luong

guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back." They — Amor Towles

It must be granted that many aspects of the intellectual life of that era showed energy and grandeur. We moderns explain its concomitant uncertainty and falseness as a symptom of the horror which seized men when at the end of an era of apparent victory and success they found themselves suddenly confronting a void: great material scarcity, a period of political and military crises, and an accelerating distrust of the intellect itself, of its own virtue and dignity and even of its own existence. Yet that very period, filled though it was with premonitions of doom, was marked by some very fine intellectual achievements, — Hermann Hesse

An army cannot be built without reprisals. Masses of men cannot be led to death unless the army command has the death-penalty in its arsenal. So long as those malicious tailless apes that are so proud of their technical achievements - the animals that we call men - will build armies and wage wars, the command will always be obliged to place the soldiers between the possible death in the front and the inevitable one in the rear. And yet armies are not built on fear. The Tsar's army fell to pieces not because of any lack of reprisals. In his attempt to save it by restoring the death-penalty, Kerensky only finished it. Upon the ashes of the great war, the Bolsheviks created a new army. These facts demand no explanation for any one who has even the slightest knowledge of the language of history. The strongest cement in the new army was the ideas of the October revolution, and the train supplied the front with this cement. — Leon Trotsky

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime. — Neil MacGregor

The reproaches against science for not having yet solved the problems of the universe are exaggerated in an unjust and malicious manner; it has truly not had time enough yet for these great achievements. Science is very young
a human activity which developed late. — Sigmund Freud

The achievements and discoveries of a great but dying society can bring light to a young and growing one. — Morgan Llywelyn

We seem to be riding on the top of the highest mast of the tallest ship; and yet at the same time we know that nothing of this sort matters; love is not proved thus, nor great achievements completed thus; so that we sport with the moment and preen our feathers in it lightly. — Virginia Woolf

In my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander's own... that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great---the victory over himself. — Arrian

The great danger in the South comes precisely from the fact that the public is not informed. Newspapers shirk notoriously their editorial responsibilities and print what they think their readers want. They lean with the prevailing winds and employ every fallacy of logic in order to editorialize harmoniously with popular prejudices. They also keep a close eye on possible economic reprisals from the Councils and the Klans, plus other superpatriotic groups who bring pressure to bear on the newspapers' advertisers. In addition, most adhere to the long-standing conspiracy of silence about anything remotely favorable to the Negro. His achievements are carefully excluded or, when they demand attention, are handled with the greatest care to avoid the impression that anything good the individual Negro does is typical of his race. — John Howard Griffin

A little here and a little there will always accumulate, so why be surprised when steady, small steps take you to great places? — Richelle E. Goodrich

All great achievements are the result of sustained focus over time - all of them. — Gary Keller

The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age ... So the Canadian artist was drawn North. — Lawren Harris

The power of "can't": The word "can't" makes strong people weak, blinds people who can see, saddens happy people, turns brave people into cowards, robs a genius of their brilliance, causes rich people to think poorly, and limits the achievements of that great person living inside us all. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

While the West had lulled itself to sleep with the comforting doctrine of man's achievements, a great revolution had been in progress in Russia. The hammer pounded and the sickle gleaned until a new social order called Communism emerged as one of the most powerful ideologies of all time. It challenged every concept man had ever held. It threatened the life of the whole world. It became the greatest challenge Christianity had faced in 2,000 years. It was a fanatic religion that asked questions and demanded answers. — Billy Graham

All the great coincidences and marvelous achievements of his life disappeared in a flash. In their place were puppet strings. 'A — Hugh Howey

Some people reckoned up all King Harald's (King of Norway) great achievements, and said that nothing would be too difficult for him. But there were others who said that England would be very hard to conquer. It was very populous and the warriors who were known as the king's Housecarls were so valiant, that any one of them was worth two of the best in King Harald's army — Snorri Sturluson

True friends are placed together for the purpose of accomplishing great achievements that help others. — Ellen J. Barrier

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. — Milton Friedman

One of the greatest resources people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction. — Nido Qubein

Most people can't understand why they want to read so much.

Likeminded types understand that they wish they had more time to read. When studying famous intellects, a pattern emerges of phases of insatiable reading for several years followed by a personal transformation into great achievements. — Peter Rogers

A stable social system is necessary, but every stable system hitherto devised has hampered the development of exceptional artistic or intellectual merit. How much murder and anarchy are we prepared to endure for the sake of great achievements such as those of the Renaissance? — Bertrand Russell

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as a species we're just no good at writing obituaries. We don't know how a man or his achievements will be perceived three generations from now, any more than we know what his great-great-grandchildren will be having for breakfast on a Tuesday in March. Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back. — Amor Towles

Shinobi from the first have been utilized by generals since ancient times with a great emphasis. It is the case that one man and his strategy can destroy tens of thousand of enemies, attain virtue and achievements, or make his way where there is no path. Even if you try to block these men with an iron gate, they can outwit you in such a skilled way, as if guided by a divine power. None could do better than them. — Yoshie Minami

If you can accomplish any great task being absorbed in it and that too without any expectations, believe me, that one act of yours will make you a "historical person". — Deep Trivedi

Thoughts and ideas are the source of all wealth, success, material gain, all great discoveries, inventions and achievements — Mark Victor Hansen

Belief is the cornerstone of all the great achievements since the beginning of time. — Robert Anthony

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk. — Dalai Lama XIV

During the nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries, certain politically active religious movements sought to have the United States declared - officially, if possible, but at least unofficially - a "Christian nation." This was an attempt to reverse the church-state separation principles and achievements of such great Founders as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Roger Williams, who was more religiously devout than just about anyone living in later centuries, opposed all attempts to call a particular nation "Christian," just as he opposed the terms "Christendom" and "Christian world." His arguments included a profound analysis of the importance of separation of church and state as well as a deep religious understanding of what Christianity is. — Alan E. Johnson

To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. — Tariq Ramadan

Don't believe it when people tell you that you will never accomplish anything great in life, or that you're ordinary or should just stay the same as everybody else. Don't let them define you, your life or your future. Don't let society or people restrict or blind you with their definitions of what's beautiful and what's not, and what's successful and what's not, follow your heart. — Auliq Ice

Every great cause is born from repeated failures and from imperfect achievements. — Maria Montessori

How much more must this be so in my own case for I am conscious not only of the great names and achievements of those who have preceded me, but also of the living presence of many of my masters and teachers. — Cecil Frank Powell

That our knowledge only illuminates a small corner of the Universe, that it is incomplete, approximate, tentative and merely probable need not concert us. It is genuine nevertheless. Physical science stands as one of the great achievements of the human spirit. — Arthur David Ritchie

In the incongruous role of the insurgent party-builder, he made crystal clear the whole host of inferences we have drawn from the experiences of Monroe and Polk: that innovation, however orthodox, is inherently destabilizing; that the purely constructive leadership project is an illusion; that the affiliated leader cannot assume independent ground without ultimately embracing the role of the heretic; that the only way ever to be president in your own right is to become yourself a great repudiator and set yourself directly against the bulwark of received power; that political disruption parallels presidential significance. Roosevelt's insight was not simply that new achievements do not rest securely on old foundations, but that to save the handiwork of his presidency he would have to reconstruct its political base. — Stephen Skowronek

If you strive towards significant achievements, count on great difficulties
on the way to realization. — Eraldo Banovac

The truth is, when you have little to do, you do very little. But when you have much to do, you do much. So it should make sense that by taking on more than you can handle, you accomplish more than you ever dreamed you could. And so it is. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Receiving the Newcombe Medal for a third year in a row is an amazing honour. The Newcombe Medal is a great occasion for the Australian tennis community to come together and celebrate our sport, recognise people's achievements and contributions to Australian tennis. — Samantha Stosur

Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom. — Murray Bookchin