Quoted by Jamie on November 11 2009:
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.
—
James Cameron, director of Terminator and Titanic, from The New Yorker
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15 comments so far
davidinbcn 11 Nov 09
nice quote, and so true!
Richard 11 Nov 09
If you shoot for the stars, you might just hit the moon.
Richard 11 Nov 09
Or perhaps,
Confuccius, ~500 BC.
TrendyGreen 11 Nov 09
If you don’t not do it, you will never not know it!
Guillermo 11 Nov 09
It’s odd that came from the man who’s making Avatar.
JD 11 Nov 09
Guillermo, wha wha what!? Bring on the blue Jar Jars! I am looking forward to Avatar.
Dante 11 Nov 09
Cameron said “goals”, but I think he meant “budget”.
“If you set your BUDGET ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”
Jim Menard 11 Nov 09
As our old band’s manager used to say, “If you aim to be a great national act, the worst you’ll be is a great local act. If all you aim to be is a great local act, you won’t get any better than that.”
Jamie, Baymard Institute 11 Nov 09
To quote David Heinemeier Hansson: “I’d encourage a lot more people to take the better odds at the smaller reward, and then perhaps worry about the billion dollars next time.”
Ryan Waggoner 11 Nov 09
This has always been my philosophy, but I’ve learned that the biggest risk to this strategy is an internal one: it results in failure more often than success, and while your failures may be better than others’ successes, they still take a psychological toll. It hurts to fail over and over again, even if you know you would have succeeded if you had set your sights a little lower.
So what I’ve started doing is breaking down my “shoot-for-the-moon” goals into smaller chunks that I can accomplish, which gives me that energy boost that success brings.
Ebun Omoni 11 Nov 09
“Shoot for the stars. If you miss, you still you land on a cloud”
Jerry Waller 12 Nov 09
Maybe it’s just me, but that quote makes no sense other than to convey a great amount of arrogance and a detachment from reality.
Joel 12 Nov 09
But if you hit a satellite it’s considered astro-vandalism…
CK1 12 Nov 09
I’ve also heard it as “If you’re in a gym and you look around and see everybody lifting 50 pounds, make it your goal to lift 200. Even if you only make it halfway to your goal you’re still twice as good as everybody else.”
Berserk 13 Nov 09
Or to quote/paraphrase Jason.. “You learn more from success than failure”.
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