“To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing and that's real power.”
Obituary for physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (Nachruf auf Ernst Mach), Physikalische Zeitschrift 17 (1916), p. 101
1910s
Context: How does it happen that a properly endowed natural scientist comes to concern himself with epistemology? Is there not some more valuable work to be done in his specialty? That's what I hear many of my colleagues ask, and I sense it from many more. But I cannot share this sentiment. When I think about the ablest students whom I have encountered in my teaching — that is, those who distinguish themselves by their independence of judgment and not just their quick-wittedness — I can affirm that they had a vigorous interest in epistemology. They happily began discussions about the goals and methods of science, and they showed unequivocally, through tenacious defense of their views, that the subject seemed important to them.
Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things easily achieve such authority over us that we forget their earthly origins and accept them as unalterable givens. [Begriffe, welche sich bei der Ordnung der Dinge als nützlich erwiesen haben, erlangen über uns leicht eine solche Autorität, dass wir ihres irdischen Ursprungs vergessen und sie als unabänderliche Gegebenheiten hinnehmen. ] Thus they might come to be stamped as "necessities of thought," "a priori givens," etc. The path of scientific progress is often made impassable for a long time by such errors. [Der Weg des wissenschaftlichen Fortschritts wird durch solche Irrtümer oft für längere Zeit ungangbar gemacht. ] Therefore it is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analysing long-held commonplace concepts and showing the circumstances on which their justification and usefulness depend, and how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience. Thus their excessive authority will be broken. They will be removed if they cannot be properly legitimated, corrected if their correlation with given things be far too superfluous, or replaced if a new system can be established that we prefer for whatever reason.
Source: 1930s, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. 322
Context: Historically our own culture has relied for the creation of rich and contrasting values upon many artificial distinctions, the most striking of which is sex. It will not be by the mere abolition of these distinctions that society will develop patterns in which individual gifts are given place instead of being forced into an ill-fitting mould. If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.
“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement …”
As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511,
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Context: My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement … Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one’s better half.
“Believe in yourself and you can achieve greatness in your life.”
“I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Mirror Dance (1994)
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
Variant: Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
“Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
“God depends on us. It is through us that God is achieved.”
Source: Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland
"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.
Variant: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.
Source: Catch-22 (1961)
Context: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
Essay "Distractions I" in Vedanta for the Western World (1945) edited by Christopher Isherwood
Source: The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential
Source: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Sect. 318, as translated by T. M. Knox, (1952)
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)
“Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.”
Interview for Press Association (3 May 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107427
Third term as Prime Minister
“Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.”
“Patience is not a virtue. It is an achievement.”
Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
“Some are born weird, some achieve it, others have weirdness thrust upon them.”
Source: To the Hilt (1996)
Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin
“To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.”
Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
Source: The Epic of Gilgamesh
"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 155.
1930s
Source: Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
“I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.”
“You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having.”
“Renounce love and you can achieve demonic focus.”
Source: The Last Werewolf
Source: The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
The alchemist, p. 141.
Variant: There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)
“Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised”
“… falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”
Source: Atonement
“Our achievements may make us interesting, Tyler, but our darkness makes us lovable.”
Source: Shampoo Planet
“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's value.”
Source: Starter for Ten
St. 9.
A Psalm of Life (1839)
Source: Longfellow's Poems
1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time — the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts… Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
“The future is not a gift-it is an achievement.”
Source: The Einstein Theory Of Relativity
“The conquest of learning is achieved through the knowledge of languages.”
Source: The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon - Volume 1
“There is no disappointment so numbing… as someone no better than you achieving more.”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)
1963, Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt
Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
Documents on International Affairs, 1963, Royal Institute of International Affairs, ed. Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, p. 36.
Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.
The Five Dimensions of Global Security: Proposal for a Multi-sum Security Principle, p. 15-16 (2007)
The Game of Life and How to Play It https://archive.org/details/gameoflifehowtop00shin (1925)
Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 6 “Up is Down: The Path Inside is Outside” (p. 185)
Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 1 ; Lead paragraph
President: Dodik Carries Out Milosevic's Politics, Dalje, 28 February 2009, 17 January 2013 http://www.javno.com/en-croatia/president--dodik-carries-out-milosevics-politics_238621, Criticizing Republika Srpska and its leader Milorad Dodik.
Gerardine DeSanctis, Brad M. Jackson, in: Coordination of information technology management: team-based structures and computer-based communication systems http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189653, Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design Volume 10 Issue 4, March 1994, pp 85-110.
The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.
