The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

Mere goodness can achieve little against the power of nature.

What I was going for in the first two albums I didn't necessarily achieve. Because I was young and because it was my first time out. And the second album was such a 'quickie' sort of 'Let's just get it over with!' But the kind of music I make there's a lot of subtlety in it. And I think it takes a couple of listens to actually really get it.

I'm obsessed with the countryside: woods forests fields lakes mountains. I'm really into folk music and folklore. But more so I'm into electronic music. I'm into bands that have both aspects like Boards of Canada is a perfect example. You could listen to that type of music running through a woods. It's kind of what I wanted to achieve.

Movies either work or they don't work and they're either funny or they're not and we work very hard. To achieve that kind of work is really kind of delicate stitching.

Part of the reason why movie bosses are so obsessed with crime movies is because they know that world and the criminals. And that's what they are - they would not hesitate to act illegally to achieve profit and gain.

I'm an actor. And I guess I've done so many movies I've achieved some high visibility. But a star? I guess I still think of myself as kind of a worker ant.

No matter how many goals you have achieved you must set your sights on a higher one.

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve not by the desire to beat others.

I woke up on the plane this morning and was turning on my phone and I had to put my pin number in. That's when I realized that since the age of 10 I've been using 2012 as my pin number. But now that I've won gold in the 2012 Olympics I've achieved that goal and for the first time in 14 years I'll have to change my pin.

Congress the press and the bureaucracy too often focus on how much money or effort is spent rather than whether the money or effort actually achieves the announced goal.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world have been achieved by poor men poor scholars poor professional men poor artisans and artists poor philosophers poets and men of genius.

To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that.

Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18 ' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements but moral acts: to return love for hate to include the excluded and to say 'I was wrong'.