Authentic Achievement Quotes

Without self-respect there can be no genuine success. Success won at the cost of self-respect is not success ? for what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own self-respect.

When the reward is the activity itself--deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best--there are no shortcuts.

The truest success is but the development of self.

To reach your goal authentically is probably, in the end, going to mean much more to you than having reached it in a false way.

Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.

Children cannot be fooled by empty praise and condescending encouragement. They may have to accept artificial bolstering of their self-esteem in lieu of something better, but what I call their accruing ego identity gains real strength only from wholehearted and consistent recognition of real accomplishment, that is, achievement that has meaning in their culture.

The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.

This is a long tough road we have to travel. The men that can do things are going to be sought out just as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Fake reputations, habits of glib and clever speech, and glittering surface performance are going to be discovered.

For me, just being on the cover of a magazine wasn't enough. I began to think, what value is there in doing something in which you have no creative input?

Success lies in doing not what others consider to be great but what you consider to be right.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

True success is reaching our potential without compromising our values.

I think our culture views success as visibility, being seen as being successful. Whereas I've learned that success is rooted in helping and connecting to other people, and knowing where you can contribute. I've kind of spent my thirties doing that, because in my twenties I was seeking any kind of success.

It isn't success after all, is it, if it isn't an expression of your deepest energies?