Quotations about Goals

Quotations about Goals




One half of knowing what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it.
~Sidney Howard

If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
~Lawrence J. Peter

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
~Samuel Johnson, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1770

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
~Doug Larson

Goals are dreams with deadlines.
~Diana Scharf Hunt

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
~T.S. Eliot

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.
~Charles DeLint


The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man's foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.
~Thomas Henry Huxley, An Address to the Students of the Faculty of Medicine in University College, London, May 18, 1870, On the Occasion of the Distribution of Prizes for the Session (Thanks, Paul.)

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.
~J.M. Power

Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
~C.D. Jackson

Life's problems wouldn't be called "hurdles" if there wasn't a way to get over them.
~Author Unknown


I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
~Douglas Adams


Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
~Author Unknown

God gives us dreams a size too big so that we can grow in them.
~Author Unknown

Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing.
~Adolph Monod

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.
~Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead


Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
~Henry Ford

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
~Les Brown

The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible. That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewis Galantière


Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
~Arnold H. Glasow

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.
~Rita Mae Brown


Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
~Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


Life is full of obstacle illusions.
~Grant Frazier

It is never too late to be who you might have been.
~George Eliot

Success is 10% inspiration, 90% last-minute changes.
~From a billboard advertisement

Seventy percent of success in life is showing up.
~Woody Allen

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
~Eva Young

I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants.
~Zig Ziglar

The best angle from which to approach any problem is the try-angle.
~Author Unknown

How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?
~Anthony Robbins


We are too busy mopping the floor to turn off the faucet.
~Author Unknown

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.
~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.
~Charles C. Noble

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
~Elbert Hubbard

We're still not where we're going, but we're not where we were.
~Natash Jasefowitz

Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
~John Dewey


The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.
~Pearl S. Buck

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
~George Bernard Shaw

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.
~Author Unknown

Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare.
~Japanese Proverb

When the horse is dead, get off.
~Author Unknown


This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anyone could have.
~Author Unknown

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

One may miss the mark by aiming too high as too low.
~Thomas Fuller

When people say to me: "How do you do so many things?" I often answer them, without meaning to be cruel: "How do you do so little?" It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.
~Philip Adams

Establishing goals is all right if you don't let them deprive you of interesting detours.
~Doug Larson


The only thing that has to be finished by next Tuesday is next Monday.
~Jennifer Yane

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
~T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1926

Map out your future, but do it in pencil.
~Jon Bon Jovi, quoted in Reader's Digest, "Quotable Quotes," September 2002

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Drift-Wood

None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
~Henry Ford, Sr.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
~Peter Drucker


Sometimes the path you're on is not as important as the direction you're heading.
~Kevin Smith

The impossible is often the untried.
~Jim Goodwin

The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.
~Vance Havner

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is best from the top.
~Arnold Bennett

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.
~Henry Ford

Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes.
~Author Unknown


When I was a Boy Scout, we played a game when new Scouts joined the troop. We lined up chairs in a pattern, creating an obstacle course through which the new Scouts, blindfolded, were supposed to maneuver. The Scoutmaster gave them a few moments to study the pattern before our adventure began. But as soon as the victims were blindfolded, the rest of us quietly removed the chairs. I think life is like this game. Perhaps we spend our lives avoiding obstacles we have created for ourselves and in reality exist only in our minds. We're afraid to apply for that job, take violin lessons, learn a foreign language, call an old friend, write our Congressman - whatever it is that we would really like to do but don't because of personal obstacles. Don't avoid any chairs until you run smack into one. And if you do, at least you'll have a place to sit down.
~Pierce Vincent Eckhart

Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
~Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back

Don't waste time learning the "tricks of the trade." Instead, learn the trade.
~Attributed to both James Charlton and H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.
~Jack Penn

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
~Beverly Sills

If it came true, it wasn't much of a dream.
~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Of course I'm ambitious. What's wrong with that? Otherwise you sleep all day.
~Ringo Starr

Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Know your limits, but never stop trying to exceed them.
~Author Unknown

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
~Harry S. Truman

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that's one of the hardest things to do because you don't always know exactly where you're going, and you shouldn't.
~George Lucas

The greatest dreams are always unrealistic.
~Will Smith

Out of the strain of the doing,Into the peace of the done.
~Julia Woodruff, Gone


Hell! There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish somep'n.
~Thomas Alva Edison

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective.
~Andre Gide

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
~Isaac Asimov

The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.
~Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, 1996

The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.
~Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, letter to Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, 7 July 1763

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
~Bruce Feirstein, Tomorrow Never Dies (screenplay)


If you don't have time to do it right you must have time to do it over.
~Author Unknown

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
~George Bernard Shaw

There is one quality more important than "know-how" and we cannot accuse the United States of any undue amount of it. This is "know-what" by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.
~Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 1954


Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
~David Lloyd George

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? - the cuckoo clock.
~Graham Greene & Orson Wells, The Third Man, movie