Quotes on Great

A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.

I had great football players. To be quite truthful, my great football players, the ones who wanted the ball at the end of the games, they weren't focused on money. They want to do something great. They want to go to Pro Bowls. They want to win Super Bowls. Those are the people that succeed in sports - or in business.

Look at the great tradition of Western political philosophy. Those people were all immersed in revolutionary movements. Most weren't career academics - often, they were too radical to be accepted in the academy. Rousseau's books were banned. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill couldn't hold academic positions because they were atheists.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

When you have a reputation for making not only good songs but great albums, that in itself creates added artistic pressure. But, at the end of the day, I guess that pressure is something I welcome.

We worked personally with a lot of great VCs. They just work incredibly hard at supporting entrepreneurs and their companies.

There are a series of emotions that most survivors go through after disclosing. It starts with feeling great, like the weight on your shoulders has been lifted, and then you're alone with your thoughts, like, 'Why did I do that?' And then, what about the person who gets backlash?

Very few of the men whose names have become great in the early pioneering of jazz and of swing were trained in music at all. They were born musicians: they felt their music and played by ear and memory. That was the way it was with the great Dixieland Five.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited - that has music and rhythm and time.

I don't think I've had a very interesting life, and I feel that is a great liberation. That gives me great freedom as a fiction writer. Nothing that happened holds any special tyranny over me.

The idea of a book that can make a change to your life, that can affect your perspective, is a beautiful and great ambition: one that Seneca, Nietzsche and Tolstoy would have sympathised with.

When I think of the Olympics I only think of good things. I think of what a great event it is and what it has done for me and my career, and changed my personal life, too.

My dad used to wake me up at 5:30 in the morning and hit me ground balls and tell me, 'Don't be afraid to excel. Don't be afraid to be great.'

Modern women are just bombarded. There's nothing but media telling us we're all supposed to be great cooks, have great style, be great in bed, be the best mothers, speak seven languages, and be able to understand derivatives. And we don't really have women we're modeling after, so we're all looking for how to do this.

It is a great delusion in those whose understanding has been darkened by self-love, to think that there is any obedience in the subject who tries to draw the superior to what he wishes.

Kids will keep it real. If I've ever had in my life a great anchor, it's them. They get in your head, 'don't get too famous.' If you think you're really famous and think you're really hip, go hang out with your kids for an afternoon. That's about as earthbound as it's going to get.

In a state therefore of great equality and virtue, where pure and simple manners prevailed, the increase of the human species would evidently be much greater than any increase that has been hitherto known.

My child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the contrary, to be at peace with your neighbors.

Strange, is it not, my brothers, how often in America those great watchwords of human energy - 'Be strong!' 'Know thyself!' 'Hitch your wagon to a star!' - how often these die away into dim whispers when we face these seething millions of black men? And yet do they not belong to them? Are they not their heritage as well as yours?

'Selma' is a story about voice - the voice of a great leader; the voice of a community that triumphs despite turmoil; and the voice of a nation striving to grow into a better society. I hope the film reminds us that all voices are valuable and worthy of being heard.

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.