True Motivation Quotes

When I saw music as a means to an end - more fame, more money, dating celebrities - that's when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it's really good, it's just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.

The key to motivation is motive. It's the why. It's the deeper yes! burning inside that makes it easier to say no to the less important.

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

If you're making music for all the right reasons, people are going to be receptive to that and appreciate it the same way you did when your were writing it.

Good works may only be beautiful sins, if they are not done in a true spirit.

Football has molded me in many ways, and I've had great experiences. But when I step back, I know that football is not what drives me. It's not really what's important.

I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something--or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.

You can fake your age or mask it, but the passion that moves the characters has to be real.

The projects that I've been fortunate enough to do are all projects where I followed my heart. I didn't follow the money or the names. It's all about reflecting my life and my art.

I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it.

Salary is not life- be it fifty-hundred-thousand or five thousand rupees. Every great man gives the credit of his development to his teacher. What else can bring more happiness for a teacher?

Not to say that you shouldn't strive for success, but don't forget why you're doing it. It's not just for adoration.

If you try to go beyond your interests just for the sake of pretensions or wealth, your art becomes less legitimate.

I never faked my emotions or my desire to be a winner.

People ask me often [whether] the Nobel Prize [was] the thing you were aiming for all your life, and I say that would be crazy. Nobody would aim for a Nobel Prize because, if you didn't get it, your whole life would be wasted. What we were aiming at was getting people well, and the satisfaction of that is much greater than any prize you can get.

For me, whether I have money or not, it is far more important that there is an intent behind a cause that's pure and can change the lives of certain people. If that's there, then you will be able to get all the resources required.