Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Let us never forget that the greatest man is never more than an animal disguised as a god.

- Picabia, Francis

Best Quotes about Greatness

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Carlyle, Thomas

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

He's the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth, Vermont. [On Calvin Coolidge]

Darrow, Clarence

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

Halsey, William F.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

Horace

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

Ruskin, John

I can write good songs. I can sing 'em, and I mean it, Imean it deeply, and I pour everything into that. Other than that, I suck.

Duritz, Adam

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

Baudrillard, Jean

10.

No one ever became great by imitation.

Johnson, Samuel

11.

Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

12.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

13.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

14.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

15.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

16.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

17.

Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

18.

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

Bruyere, Jean De La

19.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

20.

Well, I wouldn't say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Truman, Harry S

21.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

22.

After a fellow gets famous it does not take long for someone to bob up that used to sit next to him in school.

Hubbard, Kin

23.

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

Syrus, Publilius

24.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves or their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

Plato

25.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth

26.

A great man's greatest good luck is to die at the right time.

Hoffer, Eric

27.

Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, and broke the die.

Byron, Lord

28.

There are people who possess not so much genius as a certain talent for perceiving the desires of the century, or even of the decade, before it has done so itself.

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

29.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Fuller, Thomas

30.

Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

A great man stands on God. A small man on a great man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

Miller, Henry

33.

All my life I have always known I was born to greatness.

Winfrey, Oprah

34.

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

Rostand, Jean

35.

It's not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.

Gardner, Edward

36.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Franklin, Benjamin

37.

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

Shakespeare, William

39.

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

40.

The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender.

Booth, William

41.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

42.

The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.

Renan, Ernest

43.

Some have greatness thrust upon them, but not lately.

Dane, Frank

44.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

45.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

46.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

Hugo, Victor

47.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer --the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Taylor, A. J. P.

48.

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

Chesterfield, Lord

49.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

Forster, Edward M.

50.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Johnson, Samuel