Attributed without citation in Ken Robinson, The Element (2009), p. 260. Widely attributed to Michelangelo since the late 1990s, this adage has not been found before 1980 when it appeared without attribution in E. C. McKenzie, Mac's giant book of quips & quotes.
Disputed
Variant: 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.
“Aim higher in case you fall short.”
Source: Catching Fire
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Suzanne Collins 554
American television writer and novelist 1962Related quotes
“Though I imagine in your case, trying not to fall just made you fall harder.”
Source: Every Boy's Got One
“The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly. The farther you run, the more God wants you back.”
Variant: The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.
Source: Fight Club
§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius
“Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.”
Book I, ch. 27.
Discourses
Context: Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.
“I'm a guy who tries to be successful in all that I do, and when you fall short, it hurts.”
“All religions fall far short of their own ideals.”
Source: The Denial of Death (1973), The Present Outcome of Psychoanalysis, p. 204
“The higher a statue is raised, the harder and more dangerous the impact when it falls.”
#269
The Furrow (1986)