Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Goals

"A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals." - Larry Bird, fully Larry Joe Bird

"He who does not pursue ultimate goals is wasting his days." -

"It is a welcome symptom in an age which is commonly denounced as materialistic, that it makes heroes of men whose goals lie wholly in the intellectual and moral sphere. This proves that knowledge and justice are ranked above wealth and power by a large section of the human race." - Albert Einstein

"The adult world is... built on the shifting grounds of friendship and competition. The double message of this society and economy are to get along and get ahead. We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals." - Ellen Goodman

"The fruit we wish to pick tomorrow lies hidden in the seed of today. The goals we are to reach and the problems we are to solve tomorrow depend on today's diligence, hope and faith, today's conviction of the almightiness of good." - Ralph E. Johnson

"It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete." - Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

"You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures." - Charles C. Noble

"Have fun... Life is the fulfillment of one’s expectations. Life is the satisfactions rewarded to one who excels and makes himself comfortable and fits into his peer group, seeking acceptance and seeking superiority in the tasks he undertakes. Life is trying to fulfill the expectations of the dreams, hopes and goals you set." -

"The best of us still have our aspirations for the supreme goals of life, which is so often mocked by prosperous people who now control the world. We still believe that the world has a deeper meaning than what is apparent, and that therein the human soul finds its ultimate harmony and peace. We still know that only in spiritual wealth does civilization attain its end, not in a prolific production of materials, and not in the competition of intemperate power with power." -

"Awareness of the inevitability of death need not cause sadness. Rather we can use it to destroy the common worries about inconsequential aspects of life. Many worries are over matters that have no lasting value. When you overcome worry, your mind will be free to think of your ultimate goals in life." - Yechiel Michel Tukatinsky

"Since the mind is a specific biocomputer, it needs specific instructions and directions. The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, learn about them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." -

"When a person focuses on the goals of his life, he is able to overcome the difficulties involved. When one’s focus is on olam haboh [world-to-come], he lives in a state of happiness even though he experiences many inconveniences along his relatively short trip." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"When someone asks you for advice, don’t give an immediate reply. Think over your response for at least five minutes. Before you speak to someone, think first about your goals. Think of how you will say something before you say it." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"If you make the unconditional commitment to reach your most important goals, if the strength of your decision is sufficient, you will find the way and the power to achieve your goals." - Robert Conkin, aka Bob Conkin

"The magic of marriage is that it creates meaningful goals to work for, struggle for, sacrifice for. It is the joint struggle that gives the relationship its meaning, and keeps people alive." - Henry Gregor Felsen

"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents... It is a place where the city of man services not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods." - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

"In setting our military goals we need first of all to recognize that most of the world’s most basic woes do not lend themselves to purely military solutions." - Matthew B Ridgway, fully Matthew Bunker Ridgway

"One of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity – not necessarily a knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses, and justify our decisions and goals." - Terri Apter

"A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being." - Julian Baggini

"If we see life’s purpose as the achievement of future goals, several problems arise. If we are mortal, the problem is simply that there will come a time when we have no future. Life would end with meaning unfulfilled, since death would eventually rob us of the future where the purposes for our actions lie." - Julian Baggini

"Emotion may be considered the source of power that drives us forward toward our goals in life. It is through the energy of our emotions that we fuel our thought to make them real. It is in the presence of thought that our emotion is given direction, breathing life into the image of our thoughts" - Gregg Braden

"Clarity about goals saves a huge amount of energy that can be productively in other areas." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"Measuring your life daily against written goals is a fundamental of success. Fewer than 3 percent of people have written goals, and fewer than 1 percent regularly review them." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"The meaning of life is to be found in the living of it, and even for the individual a considerable range of possibilities and an unending flow of reflections upon your life constitutes part of that meaning. Play has no ultimate goal, no serious goal that will bring it to an end, but rather renews itself in constant repetition, with no repetition being an exact repeat of a prior instance. Living has a series of goals and is serious as well as playful, and yet the goals are always in transformation, or at least always in doubt. Circumstances are often similar, but it is not easy to specify exactness in your lived experience, even with someone with whom you have lived most of your life." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem – in my opinion – to characterize our age." - Albert Einstein

"When it is said and done, life’s journey isn’t about humanity in general, or even the person next door. It’s about you and me. Our individual lives are the focus, a picture framed by our birth and death. Our personal goals and principles are under scrutiny; our personal success or failure is in the balance." - Os Guiness

"In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, and even joy. Goals replace gains as motives. There is a greater freedom from living on the exciting knife edge of the moment than being a prisoner of the past or having expectations of the future." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

"Spiritual goals tend to become increasingly important and integrity becomes the yardstick of happiness. This leads to the evolution of consciousness in which the ultimate goal becomes the perfection of one’s relationship with God." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

"It is as if a divine cunning operated in human history, using our instincts as pretexts for the attainment of goals which are universally valid, a scheme to harness man’s lower forces in the service of higher ends." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"What the world needs is a sense of ultimate embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. We are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls. We are better than our assertions, more intricate, more profound than our theories maintain." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"If your goals are not important, your influence will be minimal." - Peter W. Jedlicka

"People are either driven to action or complacency, mission or rust. You’re either participating in the Game of Life or you’re watching it from the grandstands. Herein lies a crucial difference. A champion plays the game: a spectator observes, criticizes and never really gets to live. A champion knows what he or she wants and goes after it with carefully calculated goals and no-holds-barred action. A spectator feels that his or her life is not their own. They let others dictate their destiny. They become victims of life instead of masters of it.”" - Bruce Jenner, fully William Bruce Jenner

"The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"To have reached two noble goals, selflessness and flawlessness, is the highest beauty." - Chi His K’ang

"Violence is an admission that one’s ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits." - Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy

"Values are goals which behavior strives to realize. Any activity which is oriented toward the accomplishment of some end is a value-oriented activity." - Ervin László

"Don’t complain. Just work harder. We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals. And it won’t make us happier." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch

"Human happiness does not consist in satisfying one’s personal wishes but in the certainty of being needed, in having the visions of goals still unattained." - Fritz A. Rothschild

"Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans." - David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz

"In summary, goals or end-states are not intrinsically valuable, even though they direct and explain action. Although having aims or goals is an important and unavoidable aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because this would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are valuable to achieve because they lead to further worthwhile activities." - Garrett Thomson

"We are not merely instruments, either for our own goals or for those of God. This is why it is a mistake to identify the meaning of life with a goal…. This does not imply that our own goals are not and should not be important to our lives… just that they are not the meaning of life in themselves." - Garrett Thomson

"People do not always argue because they misunderstand one another; they argue because they hold different goals." - William H. Whyte, Jr., fully William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte

"The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership" -

"When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life." - Greg Anderson

"We don't need a self-help guru to remind us we all have the power to change our lives. Would you like to lose weight or tone your body? Want to be kinder, gentler? How about becoming more intellectual, or more creative? No one can stop us from reaching these goals but ourselves. We set our own limits." - Judith Barad

"We must teach our children to set high goals for their lives, to raise the bar even higher than before. And importantly, we must allow our children to dream." - Max Cleland, fully Joseph Maxwell Cleland

"Children whose souls are stunted in the shadow of relativism are left without noble ideals and moral goals to raise their sights above immediate self-gratification." - Charles Colson, fully Charles "Chuck" Wendell Colson

"It is one of the goals of religions to liberate mankind as far as possible from the bondage of egocentric cravings, desires, and fears." - Albert Einstein

"When I speak to people about creating a life, they often speak of what they want to "do" – as opposed to what they want to "feel." My recommendation to someone facing your decision is to write down a list of feelings that you're trying to create in your life and use that as the measuring stick to determine whether you're achieving your goals. I post my list right above my desk every day." - Luke O’Neill

"Anyone can become part of the critical mass that offers us a chance of improving the world before it is too late. You can rethink your goals and question what you are doing with your life. If your present way of living does not stand up against an impartial standard of value, then you can change it." - Peter Singer