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Values & belief

What are you unwilling to optimise?

30 answers answered between 1985 and 2026

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 5 Arts and letters 11 Politics and public life 3 Business and finance 6 Technology 2 Sport 3
Read by age Any age In their thirties 3 In their forties 3 In their fifties 6 In their sixties 4 Seventy and beyond 10
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Chris Hoy British track cyclist, 1994–2013
I don't enjoy it but I know that I have got to live with [myself] if I'm not going to give it 100 per cent. The key thing is getting to the start line and knowing that I couldn't have done any more, that I didn't back off. You accept the pain, because if you didn't there would always be that element of doubt.
Recorded The Independent, 27 January 2010 source ↗
Reinhold Messner Mountaineer; first to climb all fourteen eight-thousand-metre peaks
But I am not looking to any accounts, and I’m not interested at all how many money I have in the bank, what is costing this or that. I’m only trying to realize my ideas.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 22 August 2018 source ↗
Rafael Nadal Spanish professional tennis player, 2001–2024
These tics do bother me. Could I play a match without them? Yes, without some of them. I don't have to touch my nose or put my hair behind my ears before I serve. That's possible to stop. Not putting the bottles in front of my chair, I could go without that, too. But adjusting my underwear, that I could never get rid of. It's impossible.
Recorded Town & Country, 1 January 2025 source ↗

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