“For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed.”
Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
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Ken Robinson24
UK writer 1950Related quotes
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet
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.
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
The Inn Album, iv.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“3769. One may as much miss the Mark, by aiming too high, as too low.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“I will commit not the terrible crime of aiming too low.”
Og Mandino book The Greatest Salesman in the World
Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 15 : The Scroll Marked VIII, p. 91.
Context: I will commit not the terrible crime of aiming too low. I will do the work that a failure will not do. I will always let my reach exceed my grasp.
“Do not aim low, you will miss the mark. Aim high and you will be on a threshold of bliss.”
B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar
Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 177
“Those who have achieved all their aims probably set them too low.”
Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) Austrian conductor
Die 7 Geheimnisse der Dirigenten-Legende in Bild, 4. April 2008
Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge
The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 9.
Extra-judicial writings
“We aimed far and high, but we did not miss the mark.”
Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000) 15th Prime Minister of Canada
Part 4, 1979 - 1984 "Welcome to the 1980's", p. 340
Memoirs (1993)