"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."
— Leonardo da Vinci
It Had Long Since Come To
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
About this quote
This reflection is attributed to Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks in many collections, but the phrasing does not correspond to any verified passage in his surviving manuscripts. Leonardo did write extensively about the active life of invention and observation — his notebooks contain thousands of pages of experiments, designs, and observations — but this particular formulation has the character of a later paraphrase or invention rather than a direct transcription.
Source
Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
