High Achievers Quotes

The Hollywood image of the movie business is all about ambition and high achievers like James Cameron. But the British film industry is much more about men who wear cravats and work with model trains and hope another series of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' will be commissioned. ~ Peter Capaldi

I had older brothers and sisters who were high achievers, and I felt different, misunderstood by my family. That's not my family's fault; it was my perception. ~ Willie Aames

You can't work hard if you always think that high achievers possess magical powers ~ Respicius Rwehumbiza

The key differentiator, then, between happy high achievers and the rest is that happy high achievers are extremely vigilant about only allowing relationships into their lives that add to their energy. This includes their marriages as well as their relationships with their families, companies, boards of directors, key staff, and important clients. They make it a point to only allow relationships that are net additive. If a relationship isn't net additive, it's no longer one of their primary relationships. It gets shifted or it is gone. ~ Lex Sisney

One of the things you realize with a lot of high achievers: You have to figure out a way to make things their idea. ~ Hank Haney

One word: power.
The more politicians can control your access to your own wealth and earnings, the more powerful they are. The more politicians can affect businesses and important business decisions with tax policy, the more powerful they are. The more they can adversely affect the financial picture of one segment of our economy for the benefit of another, the more powerful they are. The more politicians can pander to the petty fears and jealousies of people by punishing high achievers for their efforts, the more powerful they are. ~ Neal Boortz

I haven't met too many people that don't intend to have a fulfilling life. High-achievers, however, end up allocating their resources in a way that seriously undermines their intended strategy. ~ Clayton Christensen

If you've ever done anything extraordinary in your life, always remember, no amount of ridicule can ever rob you of your achievements. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

Strong personality traits can sometimes give you a huge competitive advantage over other people - they can help you achieve things others don't. However, the trick is moderating these personality traits so that they don't dominate your nature. For example, being extremely persistent - which anxious, high achievers often are - can have a huge upside. However, if you're very persistent but can't moderate it, it can be difficult to take a break in situations in which you need one. You might find it hard to step away when you're stuck on a task and not getting anywhere or when you're involved in an argument that's going nowhere and only getting more heated. The more extreme a trait is, the more likely it is to be a double-edged sword - sometimes useful and sometimes not. ~ Alice Boyes

High achievers dwell on what they do well and spend very little time evaluating themselves and their performances. ~ John Eliot

In a variation on James's recipe for interesting experience
the familiar leavened by the novel
Hobbs's "art of choosing difficulties" requires selecting projects that are "just manageable." If an activity is too easy, you lose focus and get bored. If it's too hard, you become anxious, overwhelmed, and unable to concentrate. Tellingly, one group is distinguished by its zeal for the kind of work that requires you to give it all you've got: high achievers particularly relish taking on risky projects that have only a 50/50 chance of success. ~ Winifred Gallagher

She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are- impostors with limited skills or abilities. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

A surprising number of teens I meet in rougher schools around the country find refuge in novels and creative writing. It's not always the usual suspects either, the high achievers. ~ Matt De La Pena

High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true. ~ Robert H. Schuller

For the high achievers, studying gave them the pleasing, absorbing challenge of flow 40 percent of the hours they spent at it. But for low achievers, studying produced flow only 16 percent of the time; more often that not, it yielded anxiety, with the demands outreaching their abilities ... The low achievers found pleasure and flow in socializing, not in studying. ~ Daniel Goleman

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones
those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ~ Susan Sontag

A great advantage of a large corporation is supposed to be the large pool of talent in which its leaders can find and groom high achievers and successors. ~ Margaret Heffernan

High achievers don't like mediocre people, mediocre people don't like high achievers. ~ Nick Saban

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. ~ Chalene Johnson

Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is. ~ David Graeber

Dim as the borrowed beams of moons and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travelers,
Is Reason to the soul; and, as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day. ~ John Dryden

I often heard this melodious hymn again in days of hardship, and it always affected me painfully. Not as the reproachful warning clang of church bells ringing for service, when I pass a church door without going in, but because the men sang the hymn only when they were out of spirits and considered our position desperate. It seemed as though they would remind me that defeat awaited me, and that this time I had aimed too high. ~ Sven Hedin

What's missing is the music. I'd like to rant on and on about the music, the mechanics of it. It's what I think about 90 per cent of the day. I don't think about getting high all the time. I guess I do think about sex a lot, though ... ~ Brian Molko

At thirty-two she had less dating experience than the average high school student. ~ Lacey Alexander

Think, for a moment, about our educational ladder.
We've strengthened the steps lifting students from elementary school to junior high, and those from junior high to high school.
But, that critical step taking students from high school into adulthood is badly broken. And it can no longer support the weight it must bear. ~ Melinda Gates

Case in point: Byrdie, the son growing effortlessly into lifelong boyhood. Still a schoolboy, soon to be an old boy, blithely accepting accidents as privileges - for instance, his natural immunity to HIV. (Byrdie liked studious, upper-class females. They were not exactly high risk.) Byrdie was the phoenix edition of Lee, adapted to the novel environment, and Lee was a useless relic. He had positioned himself all his life as a rebel against a hegemonic order no one was interested in questioning anymore. It had lost its power to crush and all its clumsy weapons that inspired active fear. Its dominance was equal, but separate. ~ Nell Zink

Moon and Sea
You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea:
The tide of hope swells high within my breast,
And hides the rough dark rocks of life's unrest
When your fond eyes smile near in perigee.
But when that loving face is turned from me,
Low falls the tide, and the grim rocks appear,
And earth's dim coast-line seems a thing to fear.
You are the moon, dear one, and I the sea. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise. ~ K'naan

There is massive evidence that self-selected reading, or reading what you want to read, is responsible for most of our literacy development. Readers have better reading ability, know more vocabulary, write better, spell better, and have better control of complex grammatical constructions. In fact, it is impossible to develop high levels of literacy without being a dedicated reader, and dedicated readers rarely have serious problems in reading and writing. ~ Stephen D. Krashen

drunk right now, Amfortas suspected, or high on amphetamine, ~ William Peter Blatty

The chief problem with the individual investor: He or she typically buys when the market is high and thinks it's going to go up, and sells when the market is low and thinks it's going to go down. ~ Harry Markowitz

At the great iron gate of the churchyard he stopped and looked in. He looked up at the high tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked round at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding-sheets, and he counted the nine tolls of the clock-bell. ~ Charles Dickens

'High Concept' means a book or a film whose core idea can be stated in a single sentence, such as 'Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito are twins.' Or, 'Arnold is pregnant.' ~ Martin Cruz Smith

There is no - let me repeat - no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Like a young eaglet that gets pushed out of the nest at the appropriate time, a young man must learn to fly on his own. If the nest is too cushy, if all of his creature comforts are there for his enjoyment, then he may set up his high-definition television and perch for a while. ~ Dennis Rainey

But even when Facebook isn't deliberately exploiting its users, it is exploiting its users - its business model requires it. Even if you distance yourself from Facebook, you still live in the world that Facebook is shaping. Facebook, using our native narcissism and our desire to connect with other people, captured our attention and our behavioral data; it used this attention and data to manipulate our behavior, to the point that nearly half of America began relying on Facebook for news. Then, with the media both reliant on Facebook as a way of reaching readers and powerless against the platform's ability to suck up digital advertising revenue - it was like a paperboy who pocketed all the subscription money - Facebook bent the media's economic model to match its own practices: publications needed to capture attention quickly and consistently trigger high emotional responses to be seen at all. The result, in 2016, was an unending stream of Trump stories, both from the mainstream news and from the fringe outlets that were buoyed by Facebook's algorithm. What began as a way for Zuckerberg to harness collegiate misogyny and self-interest has become the fuel for our whole contemporary nightmare, for a world that fundamentally and systematically misrepresents human needs. ~ Jia Tolentino

I've also seen that great men are often lonely. This is understandable, because they have built such high standards for themselves that they often feel alone. But that same loneliness is part of their ability to create. ~ Yousuf Karsh

When I was a freshman in high school, I got a letterman jacket, which you'd think would be great stock. The jacket had the big S on it, for Santa Monica. But rather than having a football or a baseball on the S, I had a little nine iron. Girls thought it was a flute. ~ Carson Daly

She was playing with semantics. I felt certain that she understood the word "tip" in English. She enjoyed pretending that she thought I wanted the Duchess to be upside down with her face buried in the sewage of some manhole while her beautifully shod feet waved desperate high-heels in the air. ~ Caroline Blackwood

This is the kind of fashion I grew up on - a good pair of trainers, great denim - and I will always love high-end streetwear. ~ Tinie Tempah

Our emptiness greatly exaggerates the pleasure of an orgasm, and that of being high or tipsy. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Ryan was a nose away from the tallest cake on display, a six-foot-high chocolate masterpiece Jesse and I had created for this year's fairs. Detailed water nymph's interspersed with insects and toadstools, all sculpted by hand in rich dark chocolate. ~ Anouska Knight

I'm working on several theories," I said. "But I'm currently favoring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off." "That's a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life," he said. "Yes it is," I said, and we spontaneously fist ~ Ben Aaronovitch

High finance isn't burglary or obtaining money by false pretenses, but rather a judicious selection from the best features of those fine arts. ~ Finley Peter Dunne

Then there are other stories, touching ones, that don't belong to me.
The other day a friend related a story he'd heard from one of Chris's old schoolmates. Back in high school, a student who didn't particularly know Chris had found the only open seat at the "cool" lunch table.
"What are you doing?" said one of the kids. "You can't sit here."
"Uh--"
Chris walked up and sat down. "Have a seat," he told the young man.
He did. And no one bothered him at school the rest of the year. ~ Taya Kyle

I regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 ~ N. T. Wright

[Lemaire] has been working on the thirteenth-root challenge for a number of years. Previously, his best time had been a sluggish 77 seconds. Afterward, he told the press, "The first digit is very easy, the last digit is very easy, but the inside numbers are extremely difficult. I use an artificial intelligence system on my own brain instead of on a computer. I believe most people can do it,but I also have a high-speed mind. My brain works sometimes very, very fast.... I use a process to improve my skills to behave like a computer. It's like running a program in my head to control my brain."

"Sometimes," he said, "when I do multiplication my brain works so fast that I need to take medication. I think somebody without a very fast brain can also do this kind of multiplication but this may be easier for me because my brain is faster." He practices math regularly. So that he can think faster, he exercises, doesn't drink caffeine or alcohol, and avoids foods that are high in sugar or fat. His experience of math is so intense that he also has to take regular time off to rest his brain. Otherwise, he thinks there is a danger that too much math could be bad for his health and his heart. ~ Ken Robinson

People in government and public life are being kicked around at a high rate of speed. ~ Arlen Specter

Yes, hard is good. When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time on my knees playing with balls. I guess it was only natural that I became a catcher. ~ Mike Piazza

Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning-a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty. ~ Eric Ries

You've got good taste,honey." Daffy winked. "In food and in men."
As Daffy walked away, Marilee chuckled. "You realize," she said as she lifted the frosty bottle to her lips and drank, "that Daffy was practically drooling when she looked at you."
"She drools over every cowboy that walks through the door.Now if you'd drool"-he touched a finger to her jaw-"my ego would definitely be stroked."
"I doubt your ego needs stroking. I'm thinking you have a very high opinion of yourself,rebel."
He gave an easy laugh. "Does this mean you're not going to buy into my shy-guy routine?"
"Not likely. ~ R.C. Ryan

Stina laughed her high, wheezy snicker. "Last I checked, empathy wasn't an ability your
creators gave you."

"Last I checked, you hadn't manifested any abilities at all," Sophie spit through gritted teeth. ~ Shannon Messenger

I was quite cocky, but having been hailed as this great young golfer, I couldn't even make the high school golf team once I got there. I had a big dose of humble pie then, and ever since, I've always known that there is always someone out there better than you, more talented. Always. ~ David Chang

So initiate us," Claire said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes in challenge. "Make us priests and priestesses of Apollo."
"Say that again," Jason said, turning to Claire. He was so stunned there was almost no expression on his face.
"That's the plan you've been working on for the past two days? The one you told us not to worry about?" Matt asked in an increasingly high-pitched voice.
"Yup. ~ Josephine Angelini

I spent most of high school working on the debate team, probably at some expense to my grades. Being a member of the team was great training in critical analysis, organization, and logic. ~ David Einhorn

Almost the first thing you see after entering the Houdini exhibition at the Jewish Museum is a large-screen film of Harry Houdini hanging by his ankles upside-down from a tall building, high over a sea of men in fedoras, and thrashing his way out of a straitjacket. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Just then, a little hopped-up Japanese car zips up next to us. It's bright yellow with loud, high-pitched exhaust pipes and a big air spoiler on the back. I look over at the driver to see who's making all the racket. I'm surprised to see a teenage girl there. After a moment, she gooses it and whinnies on past. On her back window, there's a sticker: NO FEAR.
I think, good girl. ~ Michael Zadoorian

Lately, it had been an endless procession of long, black nights and gray mornings, when her sense of failure swept over her like a five-hundred-pound wave; and she was scared. But it wasn't death that she feared. She had looked down into that black pit of death and had wanted to jump in, once too often. As a matter of fact, the thought began to appeal to her more and more.

She even knew how she would kill herself. It would be with a silver bullet. As round and as smooth as an ice-cold blue martini. She would place the gun in the freezer for a few hours before she did it, so it would feel frosty and cold against her head. She could almost feel the ice-cold bullet shooting through her hot, troubled brain, freezing the pain for good. The sound of the gun blast would be the last sound she would ever hear. And then... nothing. Maybe just the silent sound that a bird might hear, flying in the clean, cool air, high above the earth. The sweet, pure air of freedom.

No, it wasn't death she was afraid of. It was this life of hers that was beginning to remind her of that gray intensive care waiting room. ~ Fannie Flagg

Don't be discouraged by people who tease you out of your dreams. What you have in your heart is bigger than what they have on their lips! ~ Israelmore Ayivor