Whether you’re starting a new job or working toward a milestone in your current career, embarking on a new hobby or honing skills at a passion you’ve had for years, setting meaningful goals gives us the momentum and motivation to keep reaching higher. From big ideas to everyday challenges, quotes on achieving goals might be the inspiration we need.
Easier said than done though, right? It can be daunting, but once you learn how to create goals that set you up for success, you’ll be on your way to achieving them in no time. So grab a journal or open your phone or laptop, and start listing small short-term goals alongside a few bigger long-term ones (think next week, next month, this year).
And if you need a little encouragement along the way, here are 95 quotes about achieving goals to keep you inspired and successful in life and work.
Related: Harnessing the Power of Momentum to Achieve Your Goals
Famous Quotes About Achieving Goals
- “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” —Les Brown
- “If you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with the spirit.” —Oprah Winfrey
- “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” —Arthur Ashe
- “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” —Jimmy Dean
- “Goals are like a map. They help us determine where we want to end up, and give us personal direction on which to focus our energy.” —Catherine Pulsifer
- “The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self.” —Dalai Lama
- “If you can dream it, you can do it.” —Sheralyn Silverstein
- “Everything is impossible until it is done.” ―Robert H. Goddard
- “Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.” ―Roy T. Bennett
- “You must have long-term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-term failures.” ―Charles C. Noble
- “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” ―Henry Ford
- “Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.”—Fitzhugh Dodson
- “I believe in goals. It’s never a bad thing to have a dream. If something is really what you want to do, just do it. Whatever your goal.” —Richard Branson
- “All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless he knows where he wants to go and what he wants to be or do.” —Norman Vincent Peale
- “Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. There’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.” —Jim Rohn
- “No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.” —Jessica Savitch
- “A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.” —Walt Disney
- “If a goal is worth having, it’s worth blocking out the time in your day-to-day life necessary to achieve it.” —Jill Koenig
- “It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” —Benjamin E. Mays
- “The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run. It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact… those people have goals.” —Seth Godin
- “Goals produce focus. Without a goal, there is no reason to focus on anything. Think of a goal as a target.” —Bill Price
- “The first goal need not be the final one, for a sailing ship sails first by one wind, then another. The point is that it is always going somewhere, proceeding toward a final destination.” —Louis L’Amour
Related: How to Reach Your Goals
Powerful Short Quotes About Achieving Goals
- “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” ―Karen Lamb
- “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” ―Napoleon Hill
- “Goals are the links in the chain that connect activity to accomplishment.” —Zig Ziglar
- “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.” —Bruce Lee
- “Goals are the road maps that guide you to your destination.” —Roy T. Bennett
- “Begin with the end in mind.” —Stephen Covey
- “We aim above the mark to hit the mark.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “There’s nothing better than achieving your goals, whatever they might be.” ―Paloma Faith
- “No desired achievement is gained without any goal setting.” ―Wayne Chirisa
- “In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.” ―Sid Caesar
- “Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.” ―Viktor Frankl
- “Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” —Earl Nightingale
- “Goals transform a random walk into a chase.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” —Albert Einstein
- “The only goals you don’t achieve in life are the goals you don’t set.” —Matt Fox
- “It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.” —Francis Bacon
- “Set realistic goals, keep reevaluating, and be consistent.” —Venus Williams
- “Dream big and dare to fail.” ―Norman Vaughan
- “Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.” —Brian Tracy
Related: Why Is Goal Setting Important? Benefits of Setting Goals and How to Reach Them
Bold Quotes About Working Hard To Achieve Goals
- “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” —Jim Rohn
- “Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit.” —Bear Bryant
- “A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.” —Bo Bennett
- “We do not develop anything with one giant step. No matter who you are, or what you do, each one of us had had to take a lot of individual steps to accomplish a task, a job, a career, or even a hobby.” —Catherine Pulsifer
- “I think goals should never be easy, they should force you to work, even if they are uncomfortable at the time.” —Michael Phelps
- “You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.” —Babe Ruth
- “I like to tell young people to work hard for your goals and live in the moment.” ―Nadia Comaneci
- “It doesn’t matter how hard you row. It matters which boat you get in.” ―Warren Buffett
- “People often say I have so much energy, that I never stop; but that’s what it takes to accomplish your goals.” ―Curtis Jackson
- “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.” ―Thomas Jefferson
- “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” —Pablo Picasso
- “You have to set goals that are almost out of reach. If you set a goal that is attainable without much work or thought, you are stuck with something below your true talent and potential.” —Steve Garvey
- “All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.” —Orison Swett Marden
- “You need lofty goals. Then cement it with a great work ethic.” —Jerry West
- “You can do anything if you set goals. You just have to push yourself.” —RJ Mitte
- “It’s important to set your own goals and work hard to achieve them.” —Yuichiro Miura
- “It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal.” —B.C. Forbes
- “A good goal is like a strenuous exercise—it makes you stretch.” —Mary Kay Ash
Motivational Quotes About Achieving New Goals
- “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” ―Eleanor Roosevelt
- “If you’re bored with life—you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things—you don’t have enough goals.” — Lou Holtz
- “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.” —Carol Burnett
- “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” —Sam Levenson
- “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” —Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips and Quotes
- “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” —Audrey Hepburn
- “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe
- “It’s harder to stay on top than it is to make the climb. Continue to seek new goals.” ―Pat Summitt
- “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ―Elbert Hubbard
- “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” ―John Lennon
- “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” ―Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive.” ―Robert H. Schuller
- “We don’t aim high enough with our goals. We all have more in us, and we are all capable of aiming higher.” ―Jesse Itzler
- “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” —Michael Korda
- “One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.” —Karen Casey
- “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” —Tony Robbins
- “Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.” —John Dewey
Encouraging Quotes About Setting And Attaining Your Goals
- “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy and inspires your hopes.” —Andrew Carnegie
- “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” —Confucius
- “You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals.” —Booker T. Washington
- “The greater danger for most of us isn’t that our aim is too high and miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” ―Michelangelo
- “Decide whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying.” —Amelia Earhart
- “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.” ―James Cameron
- “What you get by reaching your goals is not nearly so important as what you become by reaching them.” ―Zig Ziglar
- “The main thing to keep in mind is that there can be many sets of small goals involved in working up to your final and ultimate goal.” ―Ben Johnson
- “By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands—your own.” —Mark Victor Hansen
- “The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them.” —Og Mandino
- “The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.” —Bill Copeland
- “If you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you.” —Les Brown
- “You must raise your aspirations, set higher goals, and make detailed plans to achieve them.” —Brian Tracy
- “Most impossible goals can be met simply by breaking them down into bite-size chunks, writing them down, believing them and going full speed ahead as if they were routine.” —Don Lancaster
- “You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for.” —Ted Turner
- “Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success.” —David Joseph Schwartz
- “The real value of setting and achieving goals lies not in the rewards you receive but in the person you become as a result of reaching your goals.” —Robin Sharma
Motivational Sayings Can Inspire You To Accomplish Your Goals
Setting goals is no small feat, but each tiny goal attained will get you closer to the person and place you strive to be—as well as the big accomplishments you want to achieve. Remember to break loftier goals into smaller ones that are more manageable and realistic, and be sure to celebrate those little wins.
When the going gets tough, shake up your routine, remind yourself why you set each specific goal in the first place and reach out to your support system for motivation. Harness the power of these inspiring phrases and sayings on attaining goals to push you forward. Then keep your eyes on the prize and keep reaching to accomplish your goals—you can do it!
This article was updated July 2024. Photo by Studio Romantic/Shutterstock.com
