Top 181 Striving Quotes

The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.

I am more fond of achieving than striving. My theories must prove to be facts or be discarded as worthless. My efforts must soon be crowned with success, or discontinued.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.

I worked hard and made my own way, just as my father had. And just, I’m sure, as he hoped I would. I learned, from observing him, the satisfaction that comes from striving and seeing a dream fulfilled.

I love this country, but I feel like we’re losing sight of who actually holds the power and what makes us great: it’s the people, the communities, the small places that are forgotten, everyone that’s striving.

It’s sort of a meat market, the whole awards thing, and I don’t think you can predict it anymore – who’s going to like what you’ve done, if it’s worthy or not. And hopefully, that’s not why you make a film, because if you’re distracted by that, or only striving for that, you don’t do it justice.

I feel like I made it already, because I got already what everybody on the corners of the neighborhood I grew up in is striving to get.

Even though I am extremely blessed to have accomplished many of my goals at such a young age, I am still reaching, still striving.

People striving, being knocked down and coming back… this is what builds character in a man.

A lot of the values I have come from the farm and from my parents, of grafting and of giving, and of always striving to be the best you can be. It’s about teamwork.

Obviously I’m not to where Michael Jordan is, but trying to get to some level where he was and just striving for the best. That’s what got me here.

Aren’t we all striving to be overpaid for what we do?

All that you may achieve or discover you will regard as a fragment of a larger pattern of the truth which from the separate approaches every true scholar is striving to descry.

We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference.

We’re constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.

If you’re gay and you can’t hold hands, or you’re black and you can’t catch a taxi, or you’re a woman and you can’t go into the park, you are aware there’s a menace. That’s costly on a psychic level. The world should be striving to make all its members secure.

My dad was clear that it was important to start the journey from scratch and give auditions. I used to stand in long queues, where a hundred people would stand ahead of me… One thing I knew, that I must be focused on whatever I did. And that helped me to keep striving.

You don’t fight injustice by asking to become part of the system that committed the injustice against you in the first place. That’s like a freed slave striving to become a slave owner.

They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we’re not 100 per cent human, that we’re always letting ourselves down. We’re constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

If we are striving, if we are working, if we are trying, to the best of our ability, to improve day by day, then we are in the line of our duty.

Whether it’s making a film or raising my children, personally I’m striving to do the right things and to learn.

Man’s striving for order, of which art is but one manifestation, derives from a similar universal tendency throughout the organic world; it is also paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, the striving towards the state of simplest structure in physical systems.

I grew up a happy kid in Toronto. I’ve never suffered. I’ve never even had a real job! But I understand sadness and striving, and those two things tie into all the roles that I’ve played.

If you don’t want to be number one, then I don’t know what you are striving for.

The movie – any sports movie – becomes a praise song to life here on earth, to physical existence itself, beyond striving, beyond economic necessity.

The travel book is a convenient metaphor for life, with its optimistic beginning or departure, its determined striving, and its reflective conclusion. Journeys change travellers just as a good travel book can change readers.

I’m not striving for fame, that’s for sure. I don’t particularly like the idea of celebrity. I would like to be successful with my music, so I realise that there’s a balance to be made there.

If you’re constantly striving for questions that are never going to be answered, then you’re only being detrimental to your own mental health.

In 1982, I wrote in my diary that life is motion, not joy. If the way you measure success in life is by how much joy it brings you, you’re measuring inaccurately. Life is also sadness, defeat, striving. It is many things.

My life changed completely. It’s crazy now. It’s kind of gone from striving and wondering and being confused and being lost to just feeling like the most blessed person in the world – just happy to wake up every day, happy to get on a plane every time. Just couldn’t be happier with life, really.

Like Muse and Linkin Park, we are also striving to be the one and only to create a new genre called BABYMETAL. We hope to be as cool as them.

Listen to the Beatles’ ‘Things We Said Today.’ Ringo Starr does not play a fill in the entire song. It doesn’t need it. ‘A Day In the Life’ has gorgeous fills, but there, the song needs it. When I play on any record, I’m striving to get where Ringo is. You play what doesn’t take you out of the song.

I feel very blessed to have the support I have and to have the fans that I have. I’m still striving to make it every day.

America is nation of people striving to make life better for themselves and for their families.

You know, I think it’s so ironic that we’re calling hard work, striving for excellence, don’t blame others, you know, don’t give up, that we’re calling these, quote, ‘Chinese values,’ ’cause I always thought of them as American values.

The world is becoming very black and white. People are striving for perfection where only the best is acceptable. If we continue down this road, then we will lose everything that is human.

A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view.

Today, we seem to be striving towards injustice, applauding it as though it’s a worthy dream, made sacred by the caste system.

I want wins and losses to matter. That is the point of wrestling, everyone is striving to be a champion and your stature in the company is marked by your win-loss record.

Nothing good ever happens by itself – it is achieved through striving, though this sometimes bears a high price.

You’re always striving to get better, and I would get in my own way sometimes or stop myself if I felt it wasn’t as good as it should be. You’re going to fall on your face a couple of times, and the lesson is to get back up.

I’ve been striving for attention my whole life. Now I have it.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality – an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.

We are in a situation where we can have a developing backup quarterback because of the excellence of Tony Romo. We can have that behind him. To me, that’s what you’re ideally striving for.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don’t actually know what it’s going to be, but I’m still striving to get to some place with it.

I am a firm believe in the power of dreams, because the world is basically one giant realization of people’s collective dreams come true. We need to dream to aspire to do something that keeps us striving. But those dreams and ideas and wants mean nothing without execution, which doesn’t usually happen without a plan.

Some people operate in complete fear that they’re gonna lose their stuff and their money. That sounds like hell to me. And then I guess some people operate with hands open, and maybe empty, but at least striving for a deeper understanding of what it means to care.

I don’t think anyone, no matter what, can find perfect happiness until they understand exactly who they are and how every little thing they do can affect the world around them. I think perfect happiness would be a world where everyone is constantly striving to understand everyone else.

Be it jewel or toy, not the prize gives the joy, but the striving to win the prize.

In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents – those constantly striving for betterment – have any hope of surviving.

In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

I often wrangle with myself as an actor, and wrestle with the process. In striving for authenticity I often have the feeling I am falling short.

I love being able to come in every single day and work out and watch film and practice with guys who are all striving for the same goal.

The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.

Understanding why we are here, what we are supposed to be doing, relationships, and striving to do more other than play football – when you get understanding like that and apply it, it works wonders.

Everyone is comparing lives on social media and wants the perfect body, perfect image, perfect outfit, perfect life – we’re striving for this perfection, and it’s so unhealthy because there’s no such thing as perfection.

I spent the first 12 years of my life growing up in Singapore. Back then, in the early ’80s, it was still a tropical island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula striving to shine on the world stage.

Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn’t work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.

Holiness through Christ’s Spirit is the accountability every Christian should be striving towards.

Striving for equality and working together with people different from us is what America is all about, because beneath our differences we are bound by a common humanity we all share.

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.

Every dude in your high school wasn’t striving to be the best poet because then he’d get all the girls, right? But you could imagine a society in which that were the case.

I would just encourage my younger self to not care about people’s perceptions and to love myself fully and to keep progressing and striving for what you are going to become.

My general idea about my work is that it’s more about the work than the things that come with it. I am constantly striving to improve on that and find new things to do there. That journey itself is so interesting is because there’s so much to do that there’s no room for doubt there.

China is going to be one of Avon’s largest market opportunities. It has a large geographic expanse, with hundreds of thousands of women in small villages really striving to make an earnings opportunity for themselves.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

I’m still hungry. I’m still striving… You have to understand: my mum has worked hard to look after her children, but we have always been poor; we have always been at rock bottom. I want to change my family history forever.

In the younger ages, maybe you can rely more on your talent, but when you get older, you see that when you combine it with hard work, you can get everything out of your potential, and that’s what I’m striving to do – to get everything out of my potential.

Trophies or no trophies, we are all just striving to do some really good art and help people’s lives with it.

I’ve never looked at my career as something that I was striving to get to one position or another. For me, it was one step at a time.

I personally try to buy the best-quality items at the best price that do the least harm and from companies that are striving to do good – many of those companies are run by young entrepreneurs.

If you want to be the best, you can’t take the path of least resistance. Every morning, you wake up, and your mind tells you it’s too early, and your body tells you you’re a little too sore, but you’ve got to look deep within yourself and know what you want and what you’re striving for.

One day in God’s grace is equivalent to a thousand days of striving by your own efforts.

Mature striving is linked to long-range goals. Thus, the process of becoming is largely a matter of organizing transitory impulses into a pattern of striving and interest in which the element of self-awareness plays a large part.

Winning is important in this league. Just check your ego at the door. It’s all about winning. That’s what we all should be striving for.

I tend to get caught up in striving for perfection and not so much the accepting excellence part.

The people that make this country work, the people who pay on their mortgages, the people getting up and going to work, striving in this recession to not participate in it, they’re not the enemy. They’re the people that hire you. They’re the people that are going to give you a job.

‘Selma’ is a story about voice – the voice of a great leader; the voice of a community that triumphs despite turmoil; and the voice of a nation striving to grow into a better society. I hope the film reminds us that all voices are valuable and worthy of being heard.

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.

The American Dream has always focused on building a better life for yourself and your family, striving for success, and even fleeing from religious prosecution.

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.

Success isn’t about reaching your goals; it’s about striving for things, like the joy of trying to raise a family, trying to be a successful singer, trying to write good songs, trying to be a better person. It’s that old thing about life being about the journey, not the destination.

I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there’s nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it.

I have to keep pushing and keep striving, and also keep being me on the field.

The Spurs, obviously – you look at an organization like that and say that’s what you want to be consistent, because they’ve become consistent. That’s what you start striving for night in and night out.

Let our lives be in accordance with our convictions of right, each striving to carry out our principles.

The people on programmes like ‘Made in Chelsea’ just want to be celebrities. It’s so depressing. No proper actor has that as a goal. I’m striving for longevity in my career.

So, I would write songs… I sort of loved it and hated it in the sense that I would be like, it’s never good enough, and I didn’t think it was that good, but I always kept striving to write better and better stuff.

There’s never been completion in my football career because I’ve always been striving for that next thing.

The best progressive policies are constructed by learning from past experiences while striving toward a more equitable future.

LeBron carries a certain weight. You feel him all the time. On the court, off the court, in the organization. I don’t say ‘weight’ in a bad way, but his presence is always felt. He is striving for greatness at all times. Because he’s such a magnetic personality and such an incredible basketball player, people follow him.

I’m striving to be the best ever.

Without any doubt, I am striving for power.

America isn’t Congress. America isn’t Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.

All lives matter, including black lives, which is a value we should be striving for rather than condemning.

I love ‘Braxton Family Values!’ I love seeing a strong family unit striving for success while dealing with everyday struggles like everyone else. Whatever drama they find themselves in, they find a way to solve it and get back to the importance of family. A positive show for sure.

I have this firm belief that when I step on the field that I believe I’m the best player on the field, but I also believe that I’m not good enough yet. Because of that, I need to make sure that I’m striving to improve every aspect of my game.

I don’t stress about the outcome because I know the only thing I have control over is my own hard work. So long as I’m being honest about that and striving to be the best version of myself, I’m happy.

It’s a constant progression, and as long as you’re constantly striving to be better, you’re headed in the right direction.

America is not static. America is striving. And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism. You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.

Striving to tell his woes, words would not come; For light cares speak, when mighty griefs are dumb.

My ultimate goal is a statewide non-discrimination law with broad protections, and I will keep striving for it.

I believe you have to keep the theological standard high; the Lord said, ‘Be perfect,’ and the leaders have to be striving for that standard with all there is in them.

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

When you awaken some morning and hear that somebody or other has been discovered, you can put it down as a fact that he discovered himself years ago – since that time he has been toiling, working, and striving to make himself worthy of general discovery.

In keeping with original Mormon teachings, much of the property in Hildale and Colorado City is held in trust for the church. Striving to be as self-sufficient as possible, the community grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and everyone, including children, is expected to help bring in the yield.

Whether it is Ujjwala Yojana, PM Jan Dhan Yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, PM Awas Yojana or the Jal Jeevan Mission, we are always striving to create better livelihood for our citizens and to bridge the gap between the classes.

Ideas, dreams, and goals morph as we experience life, so I’m not sure I can look at it like there’s something I haven’t yet achieved since I will always be striving for something more.

Perfection is worth striving for, even if it is ultimately unattainable in this life.

I have always been guided by striving to show the best that I could. That is what kept me going in tennis and it is the same now.

We’ve lost leaders from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless others who have worked to bend the arc of the universe towards justice and equality. Yet, we remain undaunted, dedicated to striving for a fairer, more equal society.

Filming is quite exciting because every day is different, but it can involve long hours standing around in chilly locations. Theatre is a very different challenge because every night you’re striving to keep it fresh, even though you might have been performing the same play for months.

I met a number of young, striving, enterprising people in cities like Aligarh and Hubli. But the mental landscape of these towns is out of sync with their reality. Many of these towns are hellholes.

I’m striving toward this acting thing. I’m definitely gonna work hard on that, whatever comes my way, I’m gonna work hard on it.

People who become ‘elite’ at what they do aren’t striving to be ‘elite’ just to join some special club. They take great joy and satisfaction in the pursuit of mastery, and they compete against themselves, not others.

When everyone is spitting in your face and you can be nice back to society – that is the ultimate self empowerment and that’s what I was striving for.

It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. – Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace: but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary.

I was pretty rubbish when I first started dancing. I didn’t understand the discipline of working on one step over and over again. If you look at it from the outside, you’d think, ‘Why would anybody want to do that?’ But you just want to get it perfect. It is that constant inner striving that you fall in love with.

I was striving to become an engineer, but something happened that made me think, ‘Maybe I can make games instead.’

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

Arrogance sort of destroys that nervousness because you’re having a bunch of people flatter you and tell you you’re awesome, and it keeps you from striving as hard for the kind of validation you seek from a good show.

You change the mind and world of one individual and that’s huge, man. You reach one person and that starts a spiral effect and starts to snowball. I think that’s the one thing as an athlete we should all focus on doing and that’s striving to give back in a positive manner.

Love is what makes the world go around. I know it’s a big cliche to use, but it is the absolute truth. There is nothing else like it. I know that is what everybody is striving to feel: in relationships, in brother- and sisterhood, and in all of the things that we aspire to have in our lives.

Dancers are always striving for perfection. A great dancer never achieves it: you always want to do another turn, a higher jump,a more difficult acrobatic jump.

I’m not striving for happiness, I’m trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constantly rethinking and re-evaluating what you’re doing, working and working until it’s finished.

Outwardly, I may look quiet, but deep inside, I’m full of this sense of challenge. I’m always striving to work harder, to improve by learning, to do better and keep dreaming.

Ultimately, what we’re striving for is people being allowed to do what they want and not feeling they should or shouldn’t do certain things.

Keep working and saving and striving for a better future for your children, and for their children, even if you won’t be around to see it pay off.

The scientists who attack mainstream religion, rather than striving for peaceful coexistence with it, damage science, and also weaken the fight against fundamentalism.

Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

I think Pride, it means ultimately, finally, being able to live with freedom in some ways. Or, at least, that’s what we’re striving for.

I wanted to be a writer from my early teenage years, but I never told anyone. Writers, in my opinion, were god-like creatures, and to say I was striving to be a writer would be incredibly arrogant.

A lot of recent comic book adaptations have gone two ways: either they’re striving for some kind of realism, like ‘Iron Man’ or ‘The Dark Knight,’ or they’re very stylised and gritty, like ‘Sin City’ and ‘300.’

Striving to make music that empowers people as opposed to making them feel like they’re being beaten down every single day is so important.

I had to experience many situations and emotions to develop, and I’m still striving to become the kind of competitor I want to be.

Uncertainty doesn’t make life worth living, quite, but it does make striving and gambling worth attempting.

I love to help people live fully – I guess because I’m always striving towards that myself!

To be reverent is not just to be quiet. It involves an awareness of what is taking place. It involves a divine desire to learn and to be receptive to the promptings of the Spirit. It involves a striving to seek added light and knowledge.

I’m ambitious. I do think you have a tendency to be less happy sometimes when you’re a seeker. You can be disenchanted because you’re not getting what you want, and you’re always striving and looking ahead instead of just being in the moment.

Observation and thinking are the two points of departure for all the spiritual striving of man, insofar as he is conscious of such striving. The workings of common sense, as well as the most complicated scientific researches, rest on these two fundamental pillars of our spirit.

Our work can always get better, and we are constantly striving for that.

Striving for success is healthy – but believing you need to succeed the first time around may backfire. Mentally strong people believe failure is part of the process toward a long journey to success. By viewing failure as a temporary setback, they’re able to bounce back and move forward with ease.

I do write about people who are complex and are striving with something and can’t quite get past their own stuff, which would be a proxy for myself because that’s what the deal is with me.

I don’t know if I’m striving for anything that I can put into words.

It’s so jarring to go from Baghdad to Cambridge, to go from a place where people are fighting and striving and dying to a place where the biggest concern is what kind of cheese to put in your sandwich.

Fans, especially ours, demand championships. That’s what we’re striving for.

In everything I write, I’m always striving to hit the right mix of light and darkness, humor and pain, fun and seriousness.

Winning isn’t everything, but playing and competing and striving and going through things can be a lot of fun and really important. As long as you’re doing it in a way that’s healthy, sports can be an incredible opportunity.

Forget about musical credibility. I think, unless you’re Radiohead or whatever, it’s pointless striving for that. What I would like is some respect.

There should be a democracy of voices in literature. There are people who live with a kind of striving and with a certain kind of tenderness – it’s not an unusual thing – and maybe that’s not written about enough.

Just as our adversaries and threats continue to evolve, so, too, must the FBI. The key to this evolution lies with our greatest assets: our people and our partnerships. Every FBI professional understands that thwarting the threats facing our nation means constantly striving to be more effective and more efficient.

Ultimately, I do want us to be a transformative government. I want, when we’ve left, for people to say we’re not just clean-green anymore: we’re carbon neutral, or we’re striving to be.

I honestly think I’m the kind of person that is driven by fear of failure rather than striving for success. I tend to go to bed scared and wake up terrified.

Whatever course you have chosen for yourself, it will not be a chore but an adventure if you bring to it a sense of the glory of striving.

I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.

There’s really no way to be perfect. Perfectionism is a silly trait to have, so in a lot of ways that inspired the world of ‘Divergent,’ in which everyone is striving toward that ideal and falling short of it.

But in the next world I shan’t be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.

I always think that you should be striving to write your best song.

I always felt something different when I saw Gary Oldman on screen. It just felt like he knew how to reach a deeper level of himself, which is something I keep striving to reach.

I didn’t set out wanting to be an actress. That’s not what I did. I didn’t go to class striving to become an actress. I just basically – honestly, I didn’t have anything else going.

I just think that with music, it’s kind of like life, and so the people you work with, you generally develop a relationship. You don’t have to try to explain things. You just know. It’s like you’re in the band together and striving for the same goal.

That’s what we’re striving for, making us a contender in every race.

Mutual funds dare to be average. In fact, they dare to be lousy. They have long since ceased striving for anything resembling perfection when it comes to managing your money.

A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they’re lucky, a vacation.

Well, I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans and independents, for the struggling, the striving, the successful, for all those who vote for me and for those who don’t. For all Americans together.

I love all of my books. They were labors of love; I was striving to create something well done, and I do feel I succeeded.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful – unless one was striving for mediocrity.

Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn’t alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.

The retirement at WrestleMania 32 was a bittersweet moment for me. I was excited to see the next chapter of my life, which is becoming a mother, but at the same time, it was a very historical moment. It was a big part of what the Women’s Division has been striving and fighting for.

The most splendid achievement of all is the constant striving to surpass yourself and to be worthy of your own approval.

Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration. These are different love languages. These languages turn on your view of change itself: When you think of America, do you see a country struggling to be maintained or one striving to be made better?

When you’re happy you find pure joy in your life. There are no regrets in this state of happiness – and that’s a goal worth striving for in all areas of your life.

One kind of artist is always striving to annihilate the past, to make the world anew in each new work, and so to triumph over the dead weight of routine. I am the other kind… who only sees his way forward by standing on the shoulders of those who have already cleared the path ahead.

Whether you’re working on becoming a more patient parent or you’re striving to become an elite athlete, building mental strength will help you reach your goals.

When you start believing you’re something special, then you’re not going to be striving to move forward.

We’re constantly striving to bring something new and different to the table, either in the way that we’re using the cameras, or the storytelling we’re using in the scene, or the way that the characters are being motivated by the action.

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.