"I think setting a goal, getting a visual image of what it is you want. You've got to see what it is you want to achieve before you can pursue it"
About this Quote
The intent is pragmatic motivation: if you can’t picture the target, you’ll drift, confuse motion with progress, and quit the moment the effort gets boring. “You’ve got to see” is doing double duty. On the surface it’s advice; underneath it’s a warning about attention. Modern life is a feed engineered to hand you other people’s goals in bite-sized, aspirational clips. Visualization becomes a way to reclaim authorship: to decide what success looks like before the world crowds in with its default settings.
Context matters because Norris’s persona has always been about clarity and control: martial arts discipline, action-movie certainty, the clean moral geometry of good guys and bad guys. That’s why the quote lands. It’s not poetic, it’s procedural. See it, then pursue it. The subtext is less “dream big” than “stop being vague.” In a culture addicted to hustle, it quietly insists that the hardest work is choosing the right thing to chase.
Quote Details
| Topic | Goal Setting |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: 2018 Daily Planner (The Success Makers, 2017) modern compilationISBN: 9781387106318 · ID: Y9ItDwAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... I think setting a goal, getting a visual image of what it is you want. You've got to see what it is you want to achieve before you can pursue it. - Chuck Norris, American Martial Artist My 3 Goal-Related Tasks for Today ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Norris, Chuck. (2026, March 11). I think setting a goal, getting a visual image of what it is you want. You've got to see what it is you want to achieve before you can pursue it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-setting-a-goal-getting-a-visual-image-of-142597/
Chicago Style
Norris, Chuck. "I think setting a goal, getting a visual image of what it is you want. You've got to see what it is you want to achieve before you can pursue it." FixQuotes. March 11, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-setting-a-goal-getting-a-visual-image-of-142597/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think setting a goal, getting a visual image of what it is you want. You've got to see what it is you want to achieve before you can pursue it." FixQuotes, 11 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-setting-a-goal-getting-a-visual-image-of-142597/. Accessed 11 Mar. 2026.









