Quotes About Greatness

To be a great champion you must believe you are the best.  If you’re not, pretend you are.

— Muhammad Ali

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

— Thomas Carlyle

A certain excessiveness seems a necessary element in all greatness.

— Harvey Cushing

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

— Mark Twain

The greater the man, the greater the crime.

— Thomas Fuller

Greatness is a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.

— Herbert Asquith

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

— William Shakespeare

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

— Daniel J. Boorstin

The first test of a truly great man is his humility.

— John Ruskin

Few great men could pass personnel.

— Paul Goodman

No man is truly great who is great only in his own lifetime.  The test of greatness is the page of history.

— William Hazlitt

Nothing grows well in the shade of a big tree.

— Constantin Brancusi

To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is not the strength, but the duration, of great sentiments that makes great men.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There may now exist great men for things that do not exist.

— Samuel Burchardt

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

— Cicero

Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.

— William Hazlitt

It is the gods’ custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.

— Herodotus

The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.

— Confucius

Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration, and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.

— Matthew Arnold

There is no such thing as a little country.  The greatness of a people is no more determined by their number than the greatness of a man is determined by his height.

— Victor Hugo

We are both great men, but I have succeeded better in keeping it a profound secret than he has.

— Bill Nye

To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Great men are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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

— Charles de Gaulle

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

— Winston Churchill