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Quotes about motivation and goals

230 quotes from 178 people

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Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.
Dag Hammarskjöld1905–1961Vägmärken · Markings (1963), 1925–1930
- Advice
When you start doing it for the perceptions of others, you’re never going to win. Your biggest believer in what you do should be you.
Kevin Hartborn 1979His reply when asked if there is a chance audience won’t accept him in something like the movie True Story during an interview with The New York Times (23 November 2021)
As is our confidence, so is our capacity.
William Hazlitt1778–1830Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld’s Maxims (1823), No. 89
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley1849–1903Invictus (1875)In context
- Character
If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project.
Werner Herzogborn 1942Herzog on Herzog (2002), Said while making Fitzcarraldo
- Movies
Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself.
Hermann Hesse1877–1962Demian (1919), p. 193
Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.
Adolf Hitler1889–1945Mein Kampf (1925)
We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but sail we must and not drift nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858).
Greatness is not where we stand but in what direction we are moving.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.1809–1894The Autocrat Of The Breakfast Table
Now always be the best, my boy, the bravest,
and hold your head up high above the others.
Homer900–800 BCIliad, VI. 208 (tr. Robert Fagles); Glaucus recalling his father’s charge
- Courage
Enthusiasm is the great hill-climber.
Elbert Hubbard1856–1915
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Langston Hughes1901–1967Mother to Son (1922)In context
- Family
I will be Chateaubriand or nothing.
Victor Hugo1802–1885Schoolboy notebook entry (1816), as quoted in Georges Pellissier, The Literary Movement in France During the Nineteenth Century (1897)
Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.
David Hume1711–1776The History of England (1754-62)
- Character
Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to “jump at de sun.” We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.
Zora Neale Hurston1891–1960Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), Ch.2: My Folks, p. 13
- Family