David Hume on motivation and goals

Learning has been [a] great loser by being shut up in colleges and cells and secluded from the world and good company.

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’

Never give in⁠—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23