Reaching your potential requires a little endurance and commitment. These quotes about striving for greatness will offer you the encouragement and strength you need most in times when you feel like giving up.
“A great man’s greatest good luck is to die at the right time.”
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe.”
“Creativity means believing you have greatness.”
“Every great man is unique.”
“Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends.”
“Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.”
“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.”
“Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary – they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.”
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
“Greatness after all, ion spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small.”
“Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.”
“Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first.”
“He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lives a great street-sweeper who did his job well.'”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
“He who reigns within himself and rules his passions, desires, and fears is more than a king.”
“I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.”
“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
“I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”
“If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.”
“In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not.”
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
“It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.”
“Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.”
“No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.”
“No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”
“Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.”
“Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket.”
“Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.”
“Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.”
“The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness”
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
“The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself.”
“There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.”
“There would be no great ones if there were no little ones.”
“To achieve great things we must live as if we were never going to die.”
“To be great is to be misunderstood.”
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.”
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
“You can do anything you wish to do, have anything you wish to have, be anything you wish to be.”
There are many stories of greatness to share and learn from others with.
47 Most Famous Motivational Quotes of All-Time
49 Greatest Love Quotes
37 Inspirational Quotes that Will Change Your Life
