Janis Joplin Quotes

Who you are is what you settle for, you know?

I'm quite content: although what I'm doing is far from being as I should like, I am complemented often enough all the same.

You are what you settle for. You are only as much as you settle for.

I have an idea of who I want to be, I have a vision of my own success.

It is right to be contented with what we have, never with what we are.

I want to be successful, and I want to do good, but I also want to be myself.

I will never be Barbra Streisand, but I have done an awful lot more than what I was sent out to be.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.

Being realistic is the most commonly travelled road to mediocracy

Why do so manysettle for so little? I don't understand why they're not greedy for what's inside them.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

For what level of mediocrity will you settle?

So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go.

Neat trick: to be roused to ambition and reconciled to one's mediocrity at the same time.

Look what you can become in pursuit of what you want, and look out for what you become in the pursuit of what you want--don't compromise!

If I do find pride, I'll not find it in what I was or what I am, but what I may become. Not in my birth, but in myself.

I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

I am not super-ambitious. I am not a classically amazing singer or anything.

I believe happiness is a chemical imbalance - it's a silly thing to strife for. But satisfaction - if you seek satisfaction, you can succeed. Satisfaction is knowing that you're doing the best that you can do; you're living your life to the fullest.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.