I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.
Interpretation
Constantly striving for improvement prevents complacency and fosters growth.
Cicely Tyson's quote emphasizes the importance of continuous effort and ambition in life. It suggests that recognizing one's achievements can lead to complacency, and instead, one should always view their goals as a distant mountain to climb, ensuring they remain motivated and engaged in the pursuit of personal growth and self-improvement throughout their life.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech to inspire ambition in students.
How do you project a character if you don't have a sense of where she is from? I've always just gotten on a plane to go to the area to get a sense of what it is like, to smell it, feel the earth, hear people talk, go to the marketplaces.
I saw that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. So I made a choice to use my career as a platform to address the issues of the race I was born into.
I don't think you can measure wealth in dollars and cents. I really don't believe that at all because there are some things that money cannot buy. One of them is health. And the other is security in your relationships and friends.
One of the things I have always said about the man-woman relationship is that I don't want anybody to walk ahead of me, and I don't want anybody to walk behind me. I want a man who will walk along beside me. And that's how I feel about equal rights.
Unless a piece really said something, I had no interest in it. I have got to know that I have served some purpose here.
When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused
We don't talk about next year. We talk about today, and we talk about the next game. And that's all we can really control. The rest of it will take care of itself.
Goal setting has traditionally been based on past performance. This practice has tended to perpetuate the sins of the past.
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.
No one should ever be afraid of failing; it’s being afraid to give it your all in trying that I urge against. If there is one thing I have learned, particularly in my life as an athlete, it is that our limits may not be where we think they are. And, even when we think we’ve finally reached them, the next time we go there exploring we often find that they’ve moved again.
You can't put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
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