The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. Michelangelo Buonarroti

• dreams
• goals
• ambition

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it's moving you away from your goals. Brian Tracy

• purpose
• goals
• habit

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. John Steinbeck

• goals
• expectation

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. Hannah Moore

• goals
• problems

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific. Jane Wagner

• goals
• ambition

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline. Harvey Mackay

• dreams
• goals

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• goals
• self improvement
• achievement
• accomplishment

This is the source.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it. John Rockefeller

• purpose
• wealth
• goals
• greed

The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going. David Jordan

• direction
• goals

To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action. Michael Hanson

• discipline
• actions
• goals
• determination
• persistence
• planning

The trouble for most people is they don’t decide to get wealthy, they just dream about it. Michael Masterson

• wealth
• dreams
• goals
• determination

A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration. Kurt Lewin

• goals
• progress

It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny. Jean Nidetch

• goals
• destiny
• fate
• choice

One of the marks of excellent people is that they never compare themselves with others. They only compare themselves with themselves and with their past accomplishments and future potential. Brian Tracy

• self esteem
• goals
• self improvement
• standards

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. William Faulkner

• dreams
• goals
• self improvement
• ambition

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise. Robert Fritz

• desire
• goals
• ambition
• possibility

The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end. William Howard Taft

• work
• goals
• plans

Having conceived of his purpose, a man should mentally mark out a straight pathway to its achievement, looking neither to the right nor the left. Doubts and fears should be rigorously excluded; they are disintegrating elements which break up the straight line of effort, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, useless. Thoughts of doubt and fear never accomplish anything, and never can. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in. James Allen

• purpose
• fear
• goals
• thought
• achievement
• accomplishment
• doubt

This is the source.

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective. Dwight Eisenhower

• purpose
• goals

Goals are simply a way of breaking a vision into smaller, workable units. Nido Qubein

• vision
• goals

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it. Robert Heinlein

• goals

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Henry David Thoreau

• goals
• persistence
• ambition

The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. Oprah Winfrey

• work
• goals

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they may have planned for you? Not much. Jim Rohn

• goals
• planning
• plans

Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk. J. C. Penney

• goals

You should never share your goals with anyone unless you know they not only believe you can reach the goals but they want you to reach them. Others decide not to commit their goals to paper so if they don't quite "make it," they will have the built-in explanation that they didn't really fail because they never set those goals. This is a safer and even a "no risk" approach for them that guarantees they will not reach a fraction of their potential. Zig Ziglar

• goals
• risk
• associates

Without long-range goals, you are likely to be overcome by short-range frustrations. Zig Ziglar

• goals

A goal casually set and lightly taken is freely abandoned at the first obstacle. Zig Ziglar

• goals
• persistence

Our plans miscarry if they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Seneca

• direction
• goals

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Henry David Thoreau

• goals

A winner concentrates on that which is goal achieving rather than tension relieving. Denis Waitley

• goals

Make every goal clear, specific, measurable, and time bounded. Brian Tracy

• goals

Most people don't think in terms of minutes. They waste all the minutes. Nor do they think in terms of their whole life. They operate in the mid-range of hours or days. So they start over again every week, and spend another chunk unrelated to their lifetime goals. They are doing a random walk through life, moving without getting anywhere. Alan Lakein

• goals
• time management

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going. William Danforth

• direction
• goals

I have observed that setting a goal makes no appeal to the mediocre. But to those fired with an ambition really to achieve greatly, setting a goal becomes a program that stirs the inner soul to action. William Danforth

• goals

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. Jim Rohn

• discipline
• goals
• accomplishment

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things. Albert Einstein

• happiness
• goals

Write down your goals, make plans to achieve them, and work on your plans every single day. Brian Tracy

• goals

Your ability to set goals is the master skill of success. Goals unlock your positive mind and release ideas and energy for goal attainment. Without goals, you simply drift and flow on the currents of life. With goals, you fly like an arrow, straight and true to your target. Brian Tracy

• goals
• success

Happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal or goal. Earl Nightingale

• happiness
• goals

The starting point of all goal attainment is desire. You must develop an intense burning desire for your goals if you really want to achieve them. Brian Tracy

• desire
• goals

Realize what you want. It stops you from chasing butterflies and puts you to work digging gold. William Moulton Marsden

• purpose
• goals

Determine a single measure that you can use to grade your progress and success in each area of your life. Refer to it daily. Brian Tracy

• goals
• success
• progress

Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it. Brian Tracy

• goals
• flexibility

When you achieve complete congruence between your values and your goals, like a hand in a glove, you feel strong, happy, healthy, and fully integrated as a person. You develop a kind of courage that makes you completely unafraid to make decisions and take action. Your whole life improves when you begin living your life by the values that you most admire. Brian Tracy

• goals
• priorities
• values

Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying. Amelia Earhart

• fear
• goals
• worry

If you are bored with life, if you don't have a burning desire to get up in the morning to do things, your problem is you do not have goals. Lou Holtz

• goals

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams. Og Mandino

• goals
• success

A sailor without a destination cannot hope for a favorable wind. Leon Tec

• goals

You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try – you don't take the risk. Rosalynn Carter

• goals
• failure

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. Viktor Frankl

• purpose
• goals
• stress

I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will that will state even existence for its fulfillment. Benjamin Disraeli

• purpose
• goals
• determination

If you aren't working on your goals, you aren't working. You're just wasting time. Steve Pavlina

• work
• goals

All the concepts about stepping out of your comfort zone mean nothing until you decide that your essential purpose, vision and goals are more important than your self-imposed limitations. Robert White

• purpose
• goals
• limitations
• comfort

Write your goals in concrete and your plans in sand. Anonymous

• goals
• plans
• flexibility

Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication. Cecil deMille

• purpose
• goals
• persistence

If you don't have a consistent goal in life, you can't live it in a consistent way. Marcus Aurelius

• goals

This is the source.

Life is long. Don’t settle for plan B until you have tried plan A.

This is the parking space theory of life, which I have been sharing with students for years. Don’t park 10 blocks away from your destination because you think you’ll never find a closer space. Go to where you want to be. You can always circle back to where you have to be. Drew Gilpin Faust

• goals

This is the context.

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score. Bill Copeland

• goals

You should change your goals whenever you get significant new information about yourself or your goal that changes the fundamental reason that you chose the goal to begin with. John T. Reed

• goals
• persistence

This is the source.

The point is that there are times when new information warrants a goal change. The other point is that you cannot change your goals to easier goals every time the going gets tough because it got tough. Persistence is one of the most important qualities necessary for success. But persistence only applies to pursuit of the right goal for you. John T. Reed

• goals
• persistence

This is the source.

If you want to accomplish something, you must research it thoroughly to make sure you know of all the ways to accomplish it. That increases the chances that you can find a way that will work for you. John T. Reed

• resourcefulness
• goals

This is the source.

Whatever you did in the past may well have been a mistake. If you become convinced it is, clinging to it just repeats the mistake and compounds it. Put it behind you - even if it was a career you spent decades developing. All that matters when it comes to decisions is your current goal and the best way to get there from here and now. John T. Reed

• goals
• mistakes

This is the source.

No matter which goal you choose, there will be lots of people telling you you're wrong. Just pay close attention to what excites you and what drains you. Pay close attention to when you're being the real you and when you're trying to impress an invisible jury. Derek Sivers

• goals
• criticism

This is the source.

Don't worry about looking good - worry about achieving your goals. Ray Dalio

• goals
• appearance

This is the source.

The best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what do you want, then ask 'what is true' — and then ask yourself 'what should be done about it.' I believe that if you do this you will move much faster towards what you want to get out of life than if you don't! Ray Dalio

• goals

This is the source.

Life is like a giant smorgasbord of more delicious alternatives than you can ever hope to taste. So you have to reject having some things you want in order to get other things you want more.

Some people fail at this point, afraid to reject a good alternative for fear that the loss will deprive them of some essential ingredient to their personal happiness. As a result, they pursue too many goals at the same time, achieving few or none of them.

So it's important to remember: it doesn't really matter if some things are unavailable to you, because the selection of what IS available is so great. Ray Dalio

• goals
• priorities
• choice

This is the source.

Goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary. That feeling wears on you. In time, it becomes heavy and uncomfortable. It might even drive you out of the game. Scott Adams

• goals
• determination
• persistence

This is the source.

The systems-versus-goals point of view is burdened by semantics, of course. You might say every system has a goal, however vague. And that would be true to some extent. And you could say that everyone who pursues a goal has some sort of system to get there, whether it is expressed or not. You could word-glue goals and systems together if you chose. All I'm suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That's a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction. Scott Adams

• goals
• failure

This is the source.

A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don't sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it's a system. If you're waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal. Scott Adams

• goals

This is the source.

Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be. The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power. Status you can lose. You carry character with you wherever you go, and it allows you to prevail against adversity. Jordan Peterson

• character
• goals

Orient yourself properly. Then—and only then—concentrate on the day. Set your sights at the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and then focus pointedly and carefully on the concerns of each moment. Aim continually at Heaven while you work diligently on Earth. Attend fully to the future, in that manner, while attending fully to the present. Then you have the best chance of perfecting both. Jordan Peterson

• goals
• priorities