Dean Karnazes Quotes

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

I never threw away that paper with my Grammy speech because I haven't hit the pinnacles I plan to reach.

I want people to be inspired that I've always strived for excellence and I've always gone beyond what anybody ever thought I could do, what I thought I myself could do. And I've allowed myself to be inspired, kept my eyes open and my senses open to inspiration around me.

I realised I could run after finding out that my dad used to run and it gave me the morale that if he did it then maybe I could also run.

It took me 11 years to struggle through one dumb book, and every day you just want to give up. But you don't find out you're an artist because you do something really well.

What Fred Lebow went through was an inspiration for me. You have to set goals for yourself.

I think if I'd quit years ago, I'd never have known what I was capable of doing.

Athletes are moved - human beings are moved - by challenges.

I love to swim, and what I have been able to do - give people hope.

For people who believe that they can't do it, I hope I'm an inspiration to others to get out there and try swimming. You might be pretty good at it.

You can accomplish virtually any goal you set for yourself, as long as the goal is clear and you persist long enough.

With great difficulty advancing by millimeters each year, I carve a road out of the rock. For millenniums my teeth have wasted and my nails broken to get there, to the other side, to the light and the open air. And now that my hands bleed and my teeth tremble, unsure in a cavity cracked by thirst and dust, I pause and contemplate my work. I have spent the second part of my life breaking the stones, drilling the walls, smashing the doors, removing the obstacles I placed between the light and myself in the first part of my life.

We all love challenges.

You just need the freedom to dream big and a whole lot of hard work.

Success, in my view, is the willingness to strive for something you really want

When you reach for the horizon, as I've proven, you may not get there, but what a tremendous build of character and spirit that you lay down. What a foundation you lay down in reaching for those horizons.

It pays no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time.

Failure has a thousand explanations. Success doesn't need one.

All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.

View the events you consider obstacles as perfect opportunities to test your resolve and find your purpose.

Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.

Believe in your dreams and work hard for them.

And yet - and yet - one's kite will rise on the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even if everybody else is nasty about it.

The shell must break before the bird can fly.