“Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk we must act big.”
Greatness is not reserved for a select few. These quotes explore what it takes to do exceptional work, live with purpose, and push past mediocrity — not through talent alone, but through persistence, vision, and the refusal to settle.
“There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”
“Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk we must act big.”
“Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?”
“An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”
“Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.”
“Great ideas originate in the muscles.”
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.”
“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.”
“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.”
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”
“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.”
“The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.”
“They that apply themselves to trifling matters commonly become incapable of great ones.”
“Man is only great when he acts from passion.”
“It is those who concentrates on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.”
“Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.”