Quotations

PASSION

You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you're doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle." -- George Lucas

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." -- William James

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

 

 

 

*An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
- Benjamin Franklin



 More Quotations by Franklin

-2

I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

- Michael Jordan

3

Life is a big boomerang. Whatever you put out there, you get back.

- A. Drayton Boylston, tweeter February, 19, 2011

4

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

- Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), author and naturalist

5

Journalism is nothing but the effort to get as close to Truth as possible. Attention to detail and a respect for facts are hallmarks of good journalism. But the public, including bloggers, have a responsibility to pay attention too. Read accurately, analyze carefully and don't jump to conclusions.

- Jim Reed, see Memories

6

Don't let yesterday use up too much of today.

- Will Rogers

7

The centre [of the supermarket] is for boxed, frozen, processed, made-to-sit-on-your-shelf-for-months food. You have to ask yourself, "If this food is designed to sit in a box for month and months, what is it doing inside my body?" Nothing good, that's for sure.

-  Morgan Spurlock (Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America)

8

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks.  Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.

- Linda Hogan

9

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. 

- Judy Garland

10

God in His wisdom made the fly

And then forgot to tell us why.

- Ogden Nash

 

 

 

 

 

*OVERCOMING FAILURE

"All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right-about-face which turns us from failure towards success." -- Dorothea Brande

"The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself." -- Wang Yang-Ming

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage "coaches" ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory." -- Herbert Kaufman

"When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves." -- Katherine Mansfield

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OPPORTUNITIES

"Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat." -- Napoleon Hill

"Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems." -- Stephen Covey

"If opportunity doesn't knock build a door." -- Milton Berle

"The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire." -- Brian Tracy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NETWORKING

"Networking is simply the cultivating of mutually beneficial, give and take, win-win relationships. It works best, however, when emphasizing the 'give' part." -- Bob Burg

"Network continually -- 85 percent of all jobs are filled through contacts and personal references." -- Brian Tracy

"Make a list of 200 prestigious, influential, and powerful people with whom you want to work, play, grow and do business." -- Mark Victor Hansen

"It's not who you know. It's how well you maintain your Rolodex(R)." -- Patricia Fripp

 

 

 

 

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*Faith in oneself is the best and safest course..
- Michelangelo 

 - 2
When I am angry it is because I want control over something that I have no control over.
- Paul V Harris, blog January 30, 2011



- 3
Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying - without the pat-down.
- Obama, State of the Union -  January 25, 2011



- 4
They are choices that we've made as a society that are important and the right choices, so our perspective is that we're at the right place.
- Jean Charest, Quebec premier



- 5
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
Henry Ford



- 6
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
- Mark Twain



- 7
Nature doesn't make long speeches.
- Lao Tzu



- 8
Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can't measure something, you can't understand it. If you can't understand it, you can't control it. If you can't control it, you can't improve it.
- H. James Harrington



- 9
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
- George Bernard Shaw


- 10

I'm often amazed at how many times something has to happen to me before I figure it out...On the flip side - but no less comforting - we often do many things right and then fail to repeat them. We rarely take the time to pause, breathe, and think about what's working and what's not. There's just too much to do and no time to reflect... [Learning] only takes a few minutes. About five actually. A brief pause at the end of the day to consider what worked and what didn't.
- Peter Bregman, a leadership consultant and Harvard Business Review contributor

 

 

 

 

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*Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
- Walt Disney
 
 

 

- 2
I would say that anything of which 75 per cent sits idly and expensively in bank vaults is, as a measure of value, only one step up from the Polynesian islands that attached value to certain well-known large rocks that were traded.
- Jeremy Grantham, the widely followed chairman of GMO LLC, the global asset management firm. Addressing the long-term outlook for gold /in The Globe and Mail, December 11, 2010

- 3

To have a good friend is one of the greatest delights of life.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


- 4
The one thing children wear out faster than shoes parents.
- John J. Plomp


- 5
Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
- Mark Twain

- 6

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
- Walter Winchell

- 7

We must learn to differentiate between fears and anxieties. Fears are states of apprehension which focus on isolated and recognizable dangers so that they may be judiciously appraised and realistically countered. Anxieties are diffuse states of tension (caused by a loss of mutual regulation and a consequent upset in libidinal and aggressive controls) which magnify and even cause the illusion of an outer danger, without pointing to appropriate avenues of defense or mastery. These two forms of apprehension obviously often occur together, and we can insist on a strict separation only for the sake of the present argument. If, in an economic depression, a man is afraid that he may lose his money, his fear may be justified. But if the idea of having to live on an income only ten times, instead of twenty-five times as large as that of his average fellow-citizen causes him to lose his nerve and to commit suicide, then we must consult our clinical formulas.
- Erik H. Erikson (1902-1994), U.S. psychologist. Childhood and Society, ch. 11, Norton (1950).

- 8

Young people of high school age can actually feel themselves changing. Progress is almost tangible. It's exciting. It stimulates more progress. Nevertheless, growth is not constant and smooth. Erik Erikson quotes an aphorism to describe the formless forming of it. "I ain't what I ought to be. I ain't what I'm going to be, but I'm not what I was."
- Stella Chess, 1914 - died March 14, 2007 in Manhattan. She was 93, child psychiatrist - Article

- 9

The problem with putting it all on the line... is that it might not work out.
The problem with not putting it all on the line is that it will never (ever) change things for the better.
Not much of a choice, I think. No risk, no art. No art, no reward.
- Seth Godin, blog September 26, 2010

- 10

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

 

 

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MODELING BEHAVIOR

"Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act." -- George W. Crane

"You can't think your way into acting positively, but you can act your way into thinking positively." -- Nido Qubein

"If you envy successful people, you create a negative force field of attraction that repels you from ever doing the things that you need to do to be successful.  If you admire successful people, you create a positive force field of attraction that draws you toward becoming more and more like the kinds of people that you want to be like." -- Brian Tracy

"Imitate until you emulate; match and surpass those who launched you.  It's the highest form of thankfulness." -- Mark Victor Hansen