Booker T. Washington on motivation and goals

I have learnt that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual, and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward.

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