Quiet Achievement Quotes

Real greatness is often humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. Some of the greatest works of art and the most important works of peace were created by people who had no need for the limelight. They knew that what they were doing was their call, and they did it with great patience, perseverance, and love.

If you are small and don't particularly want credit for what you are doing, you can achieve a lot.

I let my work speak for me.

Do as much as possible, and talk of yourself as little as possible.

The Sage expects no recognition for what he does; he achieves merit but does not take it to himself; he does not wish to display his worth.

I believe in doing my work quietly and not make a big hullabaloo about it. That is how I operate. I don't see any other reason to be visible for; I like it when people talk about my work - that is what I am here for.

I would like to be No. 2 but never No. 1. When I was No. 1, all eyes were on me. No. 2 slips out the door quietly and makes another great record.

I would love to make my entire career as the guy who did not get cheered. Of course, I'm still going to get cheered by people who think they're smart, and that's fine - they're acknowledging how good I am at my job - but I don't want cheers; I want the boos. I love it.

Occasionally some individuals let the seeming ordinariness of life dampen their spirits. Though actually coping and growning, others lack the quiet, inner-soul satisfaction that can steady them, and are experiencing instead, a lingering sense that there is something more important they should be doing . . .as if what is quietly achieved in righteous individual living or in parenthood are not sufficiently spectacular.

The best of the sport is to doe the deede, and say nothing.

The last few years haven't been as good so I can fly under the radar, come in and do the best I can and I don't have all these high hopes placed on me.

If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known by their results.

I've always tried to work hard. I'm not trying to show anybody up or do something spectacular for attention.

I've had an unusual career in that I've never had a big break, but the rent always seemed to get paid.

For 45 years I've worked without an audience.

Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.

I let my life, and success, speak for itself.

I don't really like too much credit. I know nobody's going to believe this, but I'd rather be able to score goals and nobody saw or even spoke about it. That would be just about the perfect world for me.

Progress can be unglamorous.

Nothing so offends the doctrinaire intellectual as our ability to achieve the momentous in a matter-of-fact way, unblessed by words.

I have not tried for a career that's showy. I have always tried to layer things in and not push it. I love an underperformance, where you're so entrenched in who that person is that you're living in it.

Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.

I think that I have never had the confidence to really aggressively get behind myself, and so what I do tends to be - I don't want to say 'sheepish,' but there is a sheepish quality to my ability to toot my own horn. I'm very Midwestern in that way. So I just do what I like to do, and what I think I do well is not very loud, necessarily.

I'm not a boastful person. I like my actions to speak for me.

My career has worked out exactly how I like, and I am just happy to go to a coffee shop and nobody knows me, or when they do, they are complimenting me on the work they have seen, and it feels very genuine.