Motivational Quotes

Greatness

Great men never make bad use of their superiority. They see it and feel it and are not less modest. The more they have, the more they know their own deficiencies.

- Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Best Quotes about Greatness

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.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

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

Gardner, Edward

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Winfrey, Oprah

Great people are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

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

Shakespeare, William

10.

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

Johnson, Samuel

11.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

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

Darrow, Clarence

13.

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

14.

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

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

17.

It is necessary to be slightly under employed if you are to do something significant.

Watson, James

18.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

19.

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.

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

Halsey, William F.

22.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. [Twelfth Night]

Shakespeare, William

23.

Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon --but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx --the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right?

Dylan, Bob

24.

At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

Donne, John

25.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

26.

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.

Mcgovern, George

27.

It is not difficult to get away into retirement; and there live upon your own convictions; nor is it difficult to mix with men and follow their convictions; but to enter into the world; and there live firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience; that is Christian greatness.

28.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

29.

Great men always pay deference to greater.

Landor, Walter Savage

30.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

31.

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.

32.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

33.

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

Syrus, Publilius

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

Renan, Ernest

36.

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

37.

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

Booth, William

38.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Bowen, Elizabeth

39.

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

Ruskin, John

40.

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

41.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

42.

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.

43.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

44.

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary -- they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

45.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

46.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

48.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

49.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

La Bruyere, Jean De

50.

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.