Single Mindedness Quotes

• To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal

  Abdul Kalam

  Motivational, Goal, Succeed

  Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, Arun Tiwari (1999). “Wings of Fire: An Autobiography”, p.89, Universities Press

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• I was single-minded on what I wanted to do since I was like nine or ten.

  Sam Elliott

  Nine, Wanted, Ten

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• To get where we want to go in life, we have to keep at it. We have to create a vision, make choices based on what moves us most swiftly toward our goals, and go after them with determination and single-mindedness.

  Stedman Graham

  Positive, Determination, Moving

  Stedman Graham (1998). “You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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• Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

  Aldous Huxley

  Animal, Atheism, Cows

  "Do What You Will". Book by Aldous Huxley, 1929.

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• Now that I'm losing some, I can see how tough I was -- the killer instinct, the single-mindedness, playing like a machine. Boy, that's what made me a champion.

  Chris Evert

  Boys, Champion, Machines

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• Single-mindedness. I hate to say it because I don't think it's the best thing for developing a person, but the single-mindedness - just concentrating in the one area - that's what it takes to be a champion.

  Chris Evert

  Softball, Sports, Motivation

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• Spirituality can go hand-in-hand with ruthless single-mindedness when the individual is convinced his cause is just

  Michela Wrong

  Hands, Causes, Spirituality

  Michela Wrong (2000). “In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo”, Fourth Estate

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• We must acknowledge that we made a huge error in satisfying the lowest common denominator of the available human potential in Nigeria and we elevated what I call the reign of mediocrity. Quite frankly, I think it is about repudiating the past, creating space for new thinking for the best of the new generation, creating both political and geographical space and going at it with single mindedness that says, 'enough of buttering, sentiments and massaging the ego of the old brigade'.

  Wole Soyinka

  Past, Thinking, Space

  Source: saharareporters.com

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• I know a lot of people with obsessive qualities, and there's a positive and negative part to it. There's the appeal of someone who's so deadly focused on something that they want or desire - there's a dedication and a single-mindedness that's great. But then if it goes on too long it becomes a psychosis. What's the French term for it? Idee fixe.

  Callum Keith Rennie

  Dedication, Psychosis, Long

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• It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which Hitler has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Faith, Perseverance, Weapons

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith.

  Sam Shoemaker

  Happiness, Abiding, Enthusiasm

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• Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit

  Chip Heath

  Hard Work, Tunnels, Months

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• Sitting in your garden is a feat to be worked at with unflagging determination and single-mindedness. . . . I am deeply committed to sitting in the garden.

  Mirabel Osler

  Determination, Garden, Sitting

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• My mom has always said that the one thing she wishes she had done differently is have a job. She felt like the single-mindedness made her a little nuts sometimes, and she could have used an outlet for herself when we were little.

  Jennifer Garner

  Mom, Jobs, Nuts

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• Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Team, Passion, People

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• There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered.

  Simon Blackburn

  Integrity, Voice, Doe

  Simon Blackburn (2014). “Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love”, p.173, Princeton University Press

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• The only thing more dangerous then a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency.

  Terry Pratchett

  Blood, Lust, Vampire

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• The media - and I'm not blaming them - obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government.

  Tony Abbott

  Senior, Philosophical, Differences

  "Grattan on Friday: In Conversation with Tony Abbott". Interview with Michelle Grattan, theconversation.com. March 27, 2014.

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• Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Life, Somewhere Else, Understanding

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