Minion: We’ve had a lot of adventures together, you and I…
Megamind: Yes, Minion, we have.
Minion: I mean, most of them ended in horrible failure, but we won today, didn’t we, sir?
Megamind: Yes, Minion. We did it, thanks to you.
Minion: Code: We’re The Good Guys Now.
Megamind: Code: I Guess We Are.
Tag: success
Michael: Just hold on, please! Okay, if we do lose/lose, neither of you gets what you want. Do you understand? You… you would both lose. Now I need to ask you, do you want to pursue a lose/lose negotiation?
Angela: Can we just skip to whatever number 5 is – win/win or whatever?
Michael: Win/win is number four and number five is win/win/win. The important difference here is with win/win/win, we all win. Me too. I win for having successfully mediated a conflict at work.
It takes three things to make it in this business: the tenacity of a bulldog, the hide of a rhinoceros and a good home to come home to.
We have reached a higher degree of comfort and security than ever existed before in the history of the world.
It was close; but that’s the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die — and the difference is just an eyelash.
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you.
It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more — you have deserved it.
A minute’s success pays the failure of years.
all men strive and who succeeds?
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
I’m a failed poet.
I’m a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight o’clock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of “rags to riches” were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
Tony Stark: You’re missing the point. There’s no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes, and maybe it’s too much for us, but it’s all on you. Because if we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we’ll avenge it.
You may depend on it, that it is more in your own power than in any one else’s to promote both your comfort and advancement.
From the moment, as a boy of seventeen, I first began to pay my own way, my days were ordered by an inscrutable power which drove me hourly to my task. I was rarely allowed to look up or down, but always forward, toward that vague Success which we Americans love to glorify.
I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
When people used to see Wake Forest on the schedule, they used a pen to mark down a ‘W.’ We’re at the point now where we at least make them use a pencil.
We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
You have to believe in yourself when no one else does — that makes you a winner right there.
It’s all about the journey, not the outcome.
When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening anymore.