This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I feel that art has something to do with achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction." - Saul Bellow
"Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is required to forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart." - Allan C Carlson
"The achievement of meaning in life is akin to the gaining of knowledge: neither can be simply handed on; we all must gain each for ourselves" - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
"The end of all education should surely be service to others. We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about the progress and prosperity of our community. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others for their sake and for our own." - César Chávez, fully César Estrada Chávez
"There is not even one single thing we value when we restrict the question to ethical values. Instead, there is a plurality of different things we value, but in ethics and in life in general. In life we value pleasure, human interaction, achievement and contact with reality. In ethics we value human flourishing but also commitment and justice per se… No single set of rules seems adequate to the irreducible plurality of incommensurable things that we value." - Patrick Grim
"We must distinguish between being human and human being. We are born human beings. What we must acquire is being human. Being human is the essential – the decisive – achievement of a human being." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"If there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement." - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute, and we become aware of our oneness." - William James
"In this world the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong, they are positive, and they is the way of achievement, correction, improvement and success." - David Landes, fully David Saul Landes
"The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power." - Baird T. Spalding
"The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become." - Harold Taylor
"The unity in productive (creative) work is not interpersonal; the unity achieved in orgiastic fusion is transitory; the unity achieved by conformity is only pseudo-unity. Hence they are only partial answers to the problem of existence. The full answer lies in the achievement of interpersonal union, of fusion with another person, in love." -
"Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope or confidence." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold, and land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war, or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it; and we have sunk into indifference." -
"The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist." - J. Harold Wilkins
"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." - Woodrow Wilson
"Freedom is an internal achievement rather than an external adjustment." - Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
"Don't wait for the last judgment-it takes place every day...An achievement is bondage. It obliges one to higher achievement." - Albert Camus
"A brilliant achievement may win for you the favor of a people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of the population that surrounds you, a long succession of little services rendered and of obscure good deeds, a constant habit of kindness and an established reputation for disinterestedness will be required." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The future is big with every possibility of achievement and of tragedy." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Human dignity… can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"Human dignity...can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible." - Arthur Gordon
"Life's greatest achievement is the continual remaking of yourself so that at last you know how to live." - Author Unknown NULL
"Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. He must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing other to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"The most profoundly revolutionary achievement of the United States of America was the subordination of society to moral law." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Achievement flows from clear intent and focused effort over time. In order to achieve, we have to start where we are, find out what we need, have a plan and follow it through, persisting through difficulties and problems until we reach our goal." - Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
"The achievement of brotherhood is the crowning achievement of our society." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Independence: An achievement, not a bequest." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor." - Eric Hoffer
"Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but minister to ourselves and to our fellow men." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Aspiration is achievement." - Israel Zangwill
"The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure - fearlessness and achievement." - Joseph Campbell
"Depression, achievement, and physical health are three of the most obvious applications of learned optimism. But there is also the potential for a new understanding of yourself." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
"All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea." - Napoleon Hill
"The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire make a small amount of heat." - Napoleon Hill
"The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job." - Napoleon Hill