If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.

The gem cannot be polished without friction nor man without trials.

Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence. Ongoing, continuous, non-stop personal development literally assures you that there is no limit to what you can accomplish.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.

I know that people will remember me as Miss Universe because it was my first great achievement, but I still have my whole career ahead of me.

Any great achievement is preceded by many difficulties and many lessons; great achievements are not possible without them.

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.

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.

That has been the great achievement of our age: to so thoroughly flood the planet with megabits that every image and fact has become a digitized disembodied nothingness. With magnificent determination, our species has advanced from Stone Age to Industrial Revolution to Digital Emptiness. We’ve become weightless, in the bad sense of the word.

The euro is a great achievement. It’s a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.

We are what we do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.

I was repelled by the sleazy reality of the totalitarian countries: politicians were shameless. There were corruption, pollution, shoddy goods, long lines, and suicide everywhere, but the leaders kept boasting about their great achievements and bright tomorrows. I saw all this and tried to show it in my pictures as simply and straightforwardly as I could. All I wanted to do was record how all these poor people adapted to lies and suffering, how they got used to it, how, in fact they were bound to miss it when it was over.

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

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

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

The great achievement of Zen Buddhism, and all of its cultural expressions in painting or the tea ceremony or rock gardens, is a rejection of earlier Buddhist ideas which were dependentupon narrative – all the mythological creatures that populate the Buddhist galaxy. Zen insisted on the real located in nature.

Without adventure civilization is in full decay. … The great fact [is] that in their day the great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past.

I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That’s a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

Success … seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.

I … began my career as a wireless amateur. After 43 years in radio, I do not mind confessing that I am still an amateur. Despite many great achievements in the science of radio and electronics, what we know today is far less than what we have still to learn.

One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.

Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

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.

happiness has always seemed to me a great achievement.

We can accomplish almost anything within our ability if we but think we can! Every great achievement in this world was first carefully thought out. Think-but to a purpose. Think constructively. Think as you read. Think as you listen. Think as you travel and your eyes reveal new situations. Think as you work daily at your desk, or in the field, or while strolling. Think to rise and improve your place in life. There can be no advancement or success without serious thought

I’ve learned that every great achievement was once considered impossible

Not many of us will be leaders; and even those who are leaders must also be followers much of the time. This is the crucial role. Followers judge leaders. Only if the leaders pass that test do they have any impact. The potential followers, if their judgment is poor, have judged themselves. If the leader takes his or her followers to the goal, to great achievements, it is because the followers were capable of that kind of response.