Top 100 Quotes About What It Takes To Be Great
#1. I set out to be the best umpire of my time. But I don't know what it takes to be great.
Doug Harvey
#2. And remember it takes great courage and heart for a man who knows no kindness to show it to another. Even the wildest of beasts can be tamed by a patient and gentle hand.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#3. Just the other day I came across a statement: A perfectionist is a person who takes great pains, and gives even greater pains to others. And the outcome is just a miserable world!
Osho
#4. It is a great mistake to confuse conventionality with simplicity ... it takes a good deal of intelligence and a great many inhibitions to follow a social code.
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
#5. Being chic not only takes a great deal of money but an enormous amount of time. It practically precludes everything else, even being on charity committees. Half of one's time goes getting chic, the other half being seen that way.
Elizabeth Hawes
#6. Thought breeds thought; children familiar with great thoughts take as naturally to thinking for themselves as the well-nourished body takes to growing; and we must bear in mind that growth, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is the sole end of education.
Charlotte M. Mason
#7. It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.
Kristen Lamb
#8. It takes a truly great man to see that he's been wrong and to apologize for it, even in the face of the obvious.
Amy Lane
#9. It takes both spouses to say, "My self-centeredness is the main problem in my marriage" to have a great marriage.
Timothy Keller
#10. Life is so crowded with every day. It takes great effort to step aside and just watch and think.
Dagobert D. Runes
#11. Sometimes it takes a little madness to fulfill great things.
Melissa Kuch
#12. Nature satisfies my thirst; it feeds my hunger; it finds me clothing; it affords me shelter; it wraps me around when I sleep with beneficent and watchful care; and it takes me at last to its great bosom, where my ashes mingle with their kindred dust.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#13. Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
Pablo Casals
#14. Judging has become such a part of our thinking patterns that we are rarely even aware of why and how we do it. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even bring the habit of judging into our awareness.
Brene Brown
#15. It takes healthy, resilient leaders and employees to achieve great results.
Sue Tetzlaff
#16. In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained; Know'st thou when Fate Thy measure takes, or when she'll say to thee, "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me?"
James Russell Lowell
#17. I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies - in great towns and great crowds. It's a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge "squash", as we elegantly call it - an elbowing, pushing, perspiring, chattering mob.
Henry James
#18. Whilst running away is a great strategy, a good coward always takes the unfair advantage.
Mark Lawrence
#19. Great songs write themselves. You're just being led by the nose, or the ears. The skill is not to interfere with it too much. Ignore intelligence, ignore everything; just follow it where it takes you.
Keith Richards
#20. Because of my own experience with market fluctuation, I recognize the great risks one takes on investments. This converts the Social Security safety net into a risky proposition many cannot afford to take.
Grace Napolitano
#21. To be awarded a prize which takes its name from an illustrious Dutchman who at the same time was a great citizen of Europe and through his writings did so much to open up our modern world of sensibility and thought is indeed a most signal honour.
John G. D. Clark
#22. Everybody loves a good story, but good storytelling doesn't come easy to everybody. It's a skill that takes a lifetime to master. So study the great stories and then go find some of your own. Your stories will get better the more you tell them.
Austin Kleon
#23. A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time, never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature.
Christopher Plummer
#24. The fact is Jerry Weintraub, the handsome, bearish movie producer, the man with the long career, who worked with Arthur Godfrey and Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and George Clooney, is a great storyteller - he's this as much as he's anything else. He takes time telling stories, too.
Rich Cohen
#25. Faith takes a great many forms, suited to a variety of sensibilities, and mine happens to suit me very well.
Marilynne Robinson
#26. It takes great courage to break with one's past history and stand alone.
Marion Woodman
#27. There is no weakness in crying. If we do not sorrow over what hurts us, how do we ever go past it? I have shed many a tear myself, Barbara Devane, over what life has brought me. Compassion can come from great pain, if you allow it. But compassion takes courage. Bitterness is easier.
Karleen Koen
#28. Most people are enduring a marginalized isolation. One of the great obstacles to modern friendships is the 'religion of rush.' People are rushing all the time through time. Friendship takes time.
John O'Donohue
#29. It takes incredible fortitude to keep on the road, even though it's fun and it's rewarding and you can't complain, it's just a great life, but it takes a lot of energy.
Kate Pierson
#32. It takes great courage and personal strength to hold on to our center during times of great hurt. It takes wisdom to understand that our reactiveness only fans the flames of false drama.
Marianne Williamson
#33. The great thing about basketball is it's a live ball. If someone's in your way, push them out of the way, go around them or over them, whatever it takes.
Dolph Schayes
#34. It takes great generosity to accept generosity.
Merle Shain
#35. I've tried plenty of telephones. I tried to get into the Samsung Galaxy and the Blackberry, but the iPhone is just too easy to use. The camera takes clear pictures and the phone itself looks great. Like all Apple products, it kind of just makes sense.
Avicii
#36. I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so intensely intertwined with sin.
Mark Helprin
#37. I have great difficulty sitting in the middle of the night and writing. Everything I do comes spontaneous. Sometimes it takes a long time; sometimes it comes just like that.
Ravi Shankar
#39. Felicity laughs and takes on the tone of a fashionable lady. Darling, the Bryn-Joneses have just done the most marvelous thing in their parlor with human blood. We simply must have ours done straightaway!
Libba Bray
#40. It takes great courage and determination, to keep looking for light in all the darkness of life.
Menna Van Praag
#41. What I see as specially English is the charm - everyone is so polite. Being restrained is part of the charm. And I love the sense of humour - it takes me back to Australia. The English are great at making fun of themselves. They're so self-effacing.
Danielle De Niese
#42. It takes great effort to follow the rules of a pull system ... thus a half-hearted introduction of a pull system brings a hundred harms and not a single gain.
Taiichi Ohno
#43. First we pre-visualized it so the actors could act. It took a long time to get that to come to life and to design those coming out of the screen. We had great fun with that. It takes a long time, a year maybe.
Ang Lee
#44. I can't think of anyone I've mistreated. I've always thought that I am my brother's keeper. And I believe there's a 'great spirit' that takes care of all of us.
B.B. King
#45. Any schmuck can be unhappy when things aren't going well, but it takes a truly unique variety of schmuck; a real innovator in the schmuck field to be unhappy when things are going as great as they are for me.
Tropper Jonathan
#46. Meisner technique was different than anything I'd ever experienced. It's a really great way to be accountable to your craft and to yourself, but also it takes that kind of focus and dedication to learn anything.
Mariska Hargitay
#47. It takes a great deal of experience to become natural.
Willa Cather
#48. As J. S. Mill wrote, No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#49. My own path towards wellness has been a long and dynamic one. It's taught me that healing from the inside out takes time and there can be great value in various sources of guidance.
Carre Otis
#50. The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior, a step which our society takes only 'with the greatest reluctance'.
Raymond P. Shafer
#51. God takes great delight in surprising His people with His goodness. He delights in being there for us, in coming through for us. He loves to give us the good gifts of His provision and grace that reveal to us His nature and His character.
John Paul Jackson
#52. It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
Oscar Wilde
#53. It is a great blessing to be able to forget, but it takes a lot of wisdom to know what should be forgotten.
Martha Albrand
#54. But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last.
Katherine Anne Porter
#55. It takes courage to live your dream and bounce back up when you have been knocked down. Your dreams give you the energy and inspiration to live a great life.
Justin Langer
#56. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap
Albert Einstein
#57. With great profundity I note the pleasure one gets or takes in pushing wheeled objects, as opposed to the depression involved in pulling them.
Michael Cisco
#58. It takes two to make every great career: the man who is great, and the man-almost rarer-who is great enough to see greatness and say so.
Ayn Rand
#59. Whenever I've done a sketch in which I'm asked to play a mom, my brain goes to Minnesota. It makes the character seem matronly, warm, the kind of person that takes care of you and brings you Campbell's soup when you're sick. It's a great shortcut.
Allison Tolman
#60. It takes a great man to make a great listener
Arthur Helps
#61. No matter what identity we cling to, it takes great courage to step out of the old masks we wear and the old scripts that we live by, and open ourselves to the mysterious inner core of our being.
Adyashanti
#62. How much would you give to make your dream a living reality? Use the time you have.
J.R. Rim
#63. If you have a goal in life that takes a lot of energy, that requires a lot of work, that incurs a great deal of interest and that is a challenge to you, you will always look forward to waking up to see what the new day brings.
Susan Polis Schutz
#64. Today is the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln wrote it on his way to the site of the speech on the back of an envelope. One guy on the back of an envelope wrote the great Gettysburg Address - while every night it takes six guys to write this crap!
David Letterman
#65. A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship. It takes work to communicate accurately and it takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs. It doesn't mean there is no "they lived happily ever after," but it's more like "they worked happily ever after.
Carol S. Dweck
#66. Surrounded by the self -sufficiency of American culture, we can convince ourselves that we have what it takes to achieve something great.
David Platt
#67. people can take you to a great place, but God takes you to the best place.
Mariam
#68. It takes great salesmanship to convince a customer to buy something from you that isn't built or isn't finished.
Fred Wilson
#69. For the fact is that it takes a great deal of self-confidence for a person to poke fun at himself, and a person with that kind of self-confidence is rarely a fool or a bungler.
Paul Auster
#70. The highest function of humanity is belief, that activity of spirit that proceeds upon the pathway of reason, until it comes to some great promontory, and then spreads its wings, and upon the basis of its earlier journeying, takes eternity into its grasp.
G. Campbell Morgan
#71. It takes just such painful and terrible things to occur for the great emancipation to take place.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#72. I think it's weird how vanilla people just jump into a bed and fuck and don't ever relish the moment, don't talk to each other about what works and what doesn't. So many people just expect sex to happen, but really great sex takes work, like everything in life. You have to talk to your partner.
Lexi Blake
#73. Too many people are frightened. They want youth to last. They complain bitterly if sickness comes. But the world is always in tumult, and fortunes rise and fall and fail. It is the ambitious who accomplish things. It takes courage to be ambitious, for never was anything great achieved without risk.
Jeff Wheeler
#74. Anything great or worthwhile takes time to build.
Jimmy T.
#75. They had learned that Sorhatani expected the same sort of instant obedience as her husband. She had grown up around men of power and had married into the great khan's family at a very young age. She knew that men prefer to follow, that it takes an effort of will to lead. She had that will.
Conn Iggulden
#76. Sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostagic and hopeful all at the same time.
Nick Hornby
#77. A good SciFi Author shows you an alien world; a great one takes you there.
Ray Jay Perreault
#78. Washington is not a city that takes great pride in being a healthy place, necessarily. Now, I have no data. That's just my own observation.
Tom Rath
#79. Genuine faith is living knowledge, exact cognition, direct experience. For many centuries faith and belief have been confused, and now it takes great effort and exertion to make people understand that faith is true knowledge and not futile beliefs.
Samael Aun Weor
#80. What makes a scientist great is the care that he takes in telling you what is wrong with his results, so that you will not misuse them.
W. Edwards Deming
#81. I think it's nice if someone respects whatever their endeavor is, whether it's dance or art or stand-up comedy, to not assume that they're gonna be an overnight sensation, that it's this great craft that takes a lot of hard work to get good at.
Adrian Tomine
#82. Friendship takes time and energy if it's going to work. You can luck into something great, but it doesn't last if you don't give it proper appreciation. Friendship can be so comfortable, but nurture it-don't take it for granted.
Betty White
#83. Living everyday in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage
Min Jin Lee
#84. Doing nothing and shrinking spending may save us public money in the short term but could cost us a great deal more over time as the recession takes hold for much longer.
Lucy Powell
#85. There are moments of sincerity. Those moments float away like bubbles but he takes the trouble to dip the wand in the soap and blow them through.
Carole Radziwill
#86. Networking is an investment in your business. It takes time and when done correctly can yield great results for years to come.
Diane Helbig
#87. When we abandon all to Him, He takes a tender care of us, and His Providence for us is great or small according to the measure of our abandonment.
Francis De Sales
#88. The difference is that for a soundly conceived and solidly endowed republic it takes a great deal longer for those seeds to germinate and the plants to grow.
Robert W. Welch Jr.
#89. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
Derek Sivers
#90. I believe the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.
Michael Gerber
#91. Basketball is a game that gives you every chance to be great, and puts every pressure on you to prove that you haven't got what it takes. It never takes away the chance, and it never eases up on the pressure.
Bob Sundvold
#92. Don't ever give up on your dreams. When you finally stop chasing and grab hold, you can make great things happen. Let your determination take over, and you will be amazed at where it takes you. Your dreams are always within reach, as long as you believe.
Tessa Brookfield
#93. Becoming a great leader, a great athlete, or great chef takes more than desire or even knowledge. It takes effort. It takes practice.
Dave Anderson
#94. When you get to know a lot of people, you make a great discovery. You find that no one group has a monopoly on looks, brains, goodness or anything else. It takes all the people - black and white, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant, recent immigrants and Mayflower descendants - to make up America.
Judy Garland
#95. I've had to gain weight for roles and ugly myself up for roles. So yeah, I'm game. I'm game for that kind of thing. I'm certainly not too vain in that respect. If it's a great role, I'm willing to do whatever it is that it takes.
Jewel Staite
#96. My experience has nothing to do with creation, I don't think, even though maturity is helpful. In a creation process, there's an intuition that takes you and if it's nourished with awareness and experience, it's great.
Juliette Binoche
#97. Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.
Oscar Wilde
#98. I have that glass-half-empty syndrome, and it takes a great deal of effort to climb out of the hole of darkness that I choose to live in mentally.
Christian Slater
#99. If you make me your president, I'm going to put the country ahead of the party. I'm going to do what it takes to defend this nation. This nation has been great to me, and that's the only way I know to pay you back.
Lindsey Graham
#100. I really believe that we have to work hard to make online education better and better, and eventually it's going to be really great. But like most of these things, it takes time to improve, to understand and to make things really good.
Sebastian Thrun
