After a few months of talking with people and observing them, I realized that the traits of the successful fitness enthusiasts had everything in common with those of the high achievers I had spent years studying in business.
Progress has always been achieved by probing well-entrenched and well-founded forms of life with unpopular and unfounded values. This is how man gradually freed himself from fear and from the tyranny of unexamined systems.
We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffe...
Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive f...
Perhaps if I had made his life more difficult, he would have written less, or less freely. I cannot claim to be the midwife to genius, but if I have not facilitated,I have at least not, as many women might have done, prevented. This is a very small v...
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern...
The main danger is that of supposing that the thing to do is get a mind on the scale of Thomas (Aquinas)’s into your head, a task of compression that will be achieved only at your head’s peril. The only safe thing to do is to find a way of gettin...
From the dawn of time, whenever humanity has wanted to know more, we have achieved it most effectively not by removing ourselves from the world to ponder and theorize, but rather by getting our hands dirty and making careful observations of real stuf...
Sacrifice has great value in that it not only achieves personal success but builds successful communities, nations and humanity. Each moment spent in selfless sacrifice makes you a stronger person, and such strength fosters the required determination...
Large bodies of goal achievement research encourage written goals for good reason. When we write down our goals, we transform what we imagine into reality.
What the critic as a teacher of language tries to teach is not an elegant accomplishment, but the means of conscious life. Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utteran...
Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, beco...
Fame is also won at the expense of others. Even the well-deserved honors of the scientist or man of learning are unfair to many persons of equal achievements who get none. When one man gets a place in the sun, the others are put in a denser shade. Fr...
What I’ve always insisted on from myself is to do as well as I could, and keep doing better until I’m at least competent. Long ago I learned that to achieve anything, one must start where one stands. Or spend eternity waiting for the right moment...
Not ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be militant. Seldom are the humble s...
A leader is one who travels the path carved out by him, and he ‘leads’ himself onward on that path. If his path is good and his goals are desirable, many more may follow him in their desire to achieve the same goal. Hence, followership is the eff...
Because life, as Pablo Picasso averred, 'is a very bad novel', it has to be reworked through the writers' suffering into something much more meaningful, much more valuable. A life lived and relived, then, emitting intensity and beauty only achievable...
I could give up, it's the easiest option But what would I achieve? Many sleepless nights holding regret Of all I didn't seek, That option will never exist to me; My dreams are far too real, Down the hard road I find My place in the world; the closest...
What do you mean by ‘Divine Consciousness’? It is achieving the knowledge of oneness, i.e., to know that outside we are many but inside all are one. ‘Vedanta’ mentioned about ‘oneness’, but could not say what is oneness. When I am saying ...
The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really kno...
If I believe my ability is small, then my efforts will be shallow and my push weak. If I think I am not capable, I will not try with energy. Without strong belief, I won’t seek the knowledge required to achieve my goals. I will not launch out into ...
