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

"Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down." Hitopadesa

"No great man ever complains of want of opportunity." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"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."
Henri Frederic Amiel

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

"No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
Thomas Carlyle

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

"In our society those who are in reality superior in intelligence can be accepted by their fellows only if they pretend they are not." Marya Mannes

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

"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." Harry S. Truman

"The price of greatness is responsibility." Winston Churchill

"I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary." Lou Holtz

"The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself." Billy Mills

"It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age."Joseph Addison

"Don’t wait until you’re a man to be great. Be a ‘great’ boy."Anonymous

"Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things."Lawrence D. Bell

"Greatness after all, ion spite of its name, appears to be not so much a certain size as a certain quality in human lives. It may be present in lives whose range is very small."Phillips Brooks

"Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket."Andrew Carnegie

"The price of greatness is responsibility."Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

"Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions."Benjamin Disreali

"Every great man is unique."Ralpho Waldo Emerson

"Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To be great is to be misunderstood."Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let us consider the nature of true greatness in men. The people who can catch hold of men’s minds and feelings and inspire them to do things bigger than themselves are the people who are remembered in history. . . . those who stir feelings and imagination and make men struggle toward perfection."Henry Eyring

"Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness. . . . For you see, greatness is a measure of one's spirit, not a result of one's rank in human affairs."Sherman Finesilver

"True greatness is the most ready to recognize and most willing to obey those simple outward laws which have been sanctioned by the experience of mankind."Froude

"A great man will not trample upon a worm, nor sneak to an emperor."Thomas Fuller

"Recipe for greatness — To bear up under loss, to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief, to be victor over anger, to smile when tears are close, to resist evil men and base instincts, to hate hate and to love love, to go on when it would seem good to die, to seek ever after the glory and the dream, to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be, that is what any man can do, and so be great."Zane Grey

"There would be no great ones if there were no little ones."George Herber

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

"The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is a part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment."Elbert Green Hubbard

"Greatness of name in the father oft-times overwhelms the son; they stand too near one another. The shadow kills the growth: so much, that we see the grandchild come more and oftener to be heir of the first."Ben Johnson

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."John Fitzgerald Kennedy

" . . . I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow."Abraham Lincoln

"If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both."Horace Mann

"The great man is he who does not lose his child's heart. "Mencius

"I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet."Ogden Nash

"So when a great man dies
For years beyond our ken
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men."
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

"If we are to be really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill."Theodore Roosevelt

"Every great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons."John Ruskin

"A man who has once perceived, however temporarily and however briefly, what makes greatness of soul, can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what fate may have in store for him. The man capable of greatness of soul will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe.
He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world. In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man."
Bertrand Arthur William Russell

"A desire for bigness has hurt many folks. Putting oneself in the limelight at the expense of others is a wrong idea of greatness. The secret of greatness rather than bigness is to acclimate oneself to one's place of service and be true to one's own convictions. A life of this kind of service will forever remain the measure of one's true greatness."Richard W. Shelly, Jr.

"Some things have not changed since the dawn of history, and bid fair to last out time itself. One of these things is the capacity for greatness in man—his capacity for being often the master of the event —and sometimes even more—the changer of the course of history itself. This capacity for greatness is a very precious gift, and we are under a danger in our day of stifling it."
Dr. William Clyde de Vane

"To achieve great things we must live as if we were never going to die."Marquis de Vauvenargues