Quotes
Here are a bunch of quotes I have collected, generally organized and alphabetized by author. Some are funny, some are confrontational, some are inspirational or motivational. But all are quotes that I wanted to remember, for some particular reason.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Unknown
A man was falling from a 10-story building. As he passed each floor on the way down, people on that floor could hear him saying, “So far, so good…”
A revolution is an idea with the bayonets on.
An amateur practices until they can play it correctly; a professional practices until they can’t play it incorrectly.
An idea is not necessarily vision.
Be stubborn about your goals, and flexible about your methods.
The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.
Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that’s why life is hard.
Do not judge others just because they sin differently than you.
Do not regret growing older; it is a privilege denied to many.
Don’t trade what is important for what is immediate. Don’t trade what is valuable for what is simply available.
Drama lends little to solutions.
Even the Grinch had a dog. So if you don’t like dogs, you might need to do some soul searching.
Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.
For food in a world where many walk in hunger,
For faith in a world where many walk in fear,
For friends in a world where many walk alone,
We give You thanks, Oh Lord. Amen.
Giving up on your goal because of one setback is like slashing your other three tires because you got a flat.
Growth is recognizing the value of doing what you hate.
He who sins when drunk shall be punished when sober.
Hope is not a strategy.
I’m up way too early for someone who wasn’t planning on “seizing the day.”
If you think nobody cares if you are alive, try missing a couple of loan payments.
It’s the things that no one sees that bring the results everyone wants. Stop trying. Start training.
Just start, and it will soon become apparent where you should’ve started.
The more you like yourself, the less you’ll need others to.
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
My responsibility [as a coach] is getting all my players playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the one on the back.
Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.
Never use money to measure wealth.
Our problems are temporary, but God’s promises are forever.
Our worst days are never so bad that we are beyond the reach of God’s grace.
Seek respect, not attention. It lasts longer.
Some things you can’t fight. Some things you just have to live with.
Successful people know the difference between patience and procrastination.
Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
The man who works with his eyes on the clock
Just gets to the end of the day,
But he doesn’t get far on the road to success
For he just isn’t headed that way.
The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. In our lab, theory and practice are combined: nothing works and no one knows why.
There are two types of “tired.” One is a dire need of sleep. The other is a dire need of peace.
To understand is to know what to do.
We’re all travelers in this world, from the sweet grass to the packing house, birth till death, we travel between the eternities.
Well, McKay, you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were. And to tell you the truth, that just doesn’t seem possible.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except for bears. Bears will kill you.
When there is a storm, and you stand in front of a tree, if you look at its branches, you swear it will fall. But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability.
You either have it or you don’t.
A
The beauty of the ocean is that it is too vast to overflow with your tears, and in the morning there is no trace left of the day before. It is a place to find new beginnings.
I realized then that cancer had stolen one more thing from me. It had taken away my limitations.
Sometimes you suffer for the things that are most important to you.
Big dreams take big teams.
Comparison leads to arrogance or shame, but never happiness.
Fear steals our minutes and hopes we won’t notice until whole years are missing.
Great lives are rarely created in great comfort.
Leaders who can’t be questioned end up doing questionable things.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naïve incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Losers have goals. Winners have systems.
If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
The key to the success of any company — but especially one in turnaround mode — is how quickly they get rid of underachievers and what they do to retain top talent.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.
It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
It’s not bragging if you can back it up.
The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.
If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sure sign you’re not trying anything innovative.
You can do anything, but not everything.
Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up too.
I don’t think there’s too much normal out there anymore. Though there’s still plenty of average to go around.
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.
Love liberates. Love — not sentimentality, not mush — but true love gives you enough courage that you can say to somebody, “Don’t do that, baby.” And the person will know you’re not preaching but teaching.
Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.
Big data is like teenage sex: Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Technology is limited only by our ability to use it effectively. If we find constructive, resourceful, and educational ways to use technology, it can become our ally, not our enemy. The only thing to blame for the negative effects of technology is ourselves.
One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.
Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart, one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
I have read many beautiful things in Plato and Cicero, but never this: “Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden.”
Blame yourself — or blame no one.
Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.
Words once in common use now sound archaic. And the names of the famous dead, as well: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus… Scipio and Cato… Augustus… Hadrian and Antoninus… everything fades so quickly, turns into legend and soon oblivion covers it.
You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
B
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
My mother’s advice was, don’t lose time on useless emotions like anger, resentment, remorse, envy. Those, she said, will just sap time; they don’t get you where you want to be. One way I coped with times I was angry: I would sit down and practice the piano. I wasn’t very good at it, but it did distract me from whatever useless emotion I was feeling at the moment. Later, I did the same with the cello. I would be absorbed in the music, and the useless emotion faded away.
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
My reminder: I don’t have to see God working to know that He is always at work. His faithfulness is not contingent upon my senses.
When inspiration calls, I don’t let it go to voicemail.
A good deed is never lost: He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.
The antidote for fear of failure is not success but small doses of failure.
The healthiest and holiest people are the people who laugh at themselves the most. Failure helps us take God more seriously and ourselves less seriously.
Leaders need the courage to acknowledge when something isn’t working.
Is it not enough that all the world is against us, but we must also be against one another? O happy days of persecution, which drove us together in love, whom the sunshine of liberty and prosperity crumbles into dust by our contentions!
Most unhappy people need to learn just one lesson: How to see themselves through the lens of genuine compassion and treat themselves accordingly.
Buy less junk.
Gratitude causes us to no longer desire a different life. Instead, it causes us to make the most of the one life we already have.
The comparison game is one you’ll never win.
Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.
I try. I fail. I try again. I fail better.
The delays of God are always purposeful.
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Innovation… by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.
A leader has the ability to turn intention into reality and sustain it.
Pride is concerned with who is right; humility is concerned with what is right.
No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did. President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: Keep it short, or you might die.
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devoted than ever before.
A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.
If you come to a fork in the road, take it.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
The towels were so thick I could hardly close my suitcase.
Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do to you.
Especially among Christians in positions of wealth and power, the idea of reading the Gospels and keeping Jesus’ commandments as stated therein has been replaced by a curious process of logic. According to this process, people first declare themselves to be followers of Christ, and then they assume that whatever they say or do merits the adjective “Christian.”
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
Persistence can change failure into extraordinary achievement.
Those converted in childhood should be the most thankful for grace. All their most egregious sins were committed AFTER they met Jesus.
Those converted in childhood sometimes think they don’t have an amazing grace testimony because they don’t have a storyline of ruin then redemption. But we’re spectacular trophies of grace because our storyline is redemption then ruin. We’re the best proof of man’s fallenness because with every advantage we still would self-destruct were it not for preserving grace. Indeed, we all have an amazing grace testimony.
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
If your gospel isn’t touching others, it hasn’t touched you.
I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying at all.
It’s one thing to be able to define what our most important tasks are; it’s another thing entirely to make the time and put forth energy to do those tasks.
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
If your business keeps you so busy that you have no time for anything else, there must be something wrong either with you or with your business.
Reading is more important than writing.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get.
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.
I’m not better than you; I’m just different than you in a way that’s better.
The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.
Business opportunities are like buses — there’s always another one coming.
Two bricklayers work side by side. The first lays bricks. The second builds magnificent cathedrals. Think small vs. think big.
Optimist: Someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s a cha-cha.
What is a mom but the sunshine of our days and the north star of our nights?
You might be the “little drummer boy,” worried that what you have to say isn’t worthy. Everyone has something to contribute, especially if you remember to be the real you and not a copy of others you feel are successful.
Sports do not build character; they reveal it.
Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.
Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
What are they going to do? Take away their love? I get more critical letters than you could possibly imagine. After I read them, I think, “I have a wife who loves me, a family who accepts me, some friends who don’t think it’s permanent when I’ve made a fool of myself. And even more important than all of those, I have a God who will never be angry at me again. I am loved by those who will never take away their love. I don’t care if you don’t love me.” Just what are they going to do? They have no leverage. And without leverage, they have no power. Real boldness is just another name for nothing left to lose. And Christians who have nothing left to lose are the world’s worst nightmare.
Love doesn’t make the world go round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
It’s not the will to win that matters — everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.
A jug fills drop by drop.
You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
The real fortunes in this country have been made by people who have been right about the business they invested in, and not right about the timing of the stock market.
You have a clean slate every day you wake up. You have a chance every single morning to make that change and be the person you want to be. You just have to decide to do it. Decide today’s the day. Say it: This is going to be my day.
I’m putting the “dressed” in “overdressed.”
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring; all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it that makes a difference.
Change is easy; the transition is hard.
Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty — they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.
C
To build a strong team, you must see someone else’s strength as a complement to your weakness, not a threat to your position or authority.
Putting religion and politics together is like mixing ice cream with horse manure. It doesn’t hurt the horse manure; it ruins the ice cream.
Grace cannot prevail until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and died.
The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping.
Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.
Doesn’t matter what the press says. Doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something is wrong or right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world, “No, you move.”
No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all for himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
Good speakers usually find when they finish that there have been four versions of the speech: the one they delivered, the one they prepared, the one the newspapers say was delivered, and the one on the way home they wish they had delivered.
Can we really claim to be pro-life if we fail to consider the importance of caring for any and all at-risk children?
Poverty is not necessarily an issue to solve; it is an opportunity to serve.
A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.
There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
Beware of paying attention or going back to what you once were, when God wants you to be something that you have never been.
Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
An effective vision will always be memorable, portable, and motivational.
Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
We feel that we have to be right so that we can feel good… The whole right and wrong business closes us down and makes our world smaller.
Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you’re happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.
The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety.
There’s too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will.
Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
Never, never, never, never give up.
Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.
The truth is incontrovertible; malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
There’s nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child.
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Create something. Most people buy the life that others created for them. Build something beautiful instead of accepting something average.
The ultimate productivity hack is saying no.
Because as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work.
My daughter said, “Why are you yelling at us?”, and I said, “I’m trying to discipline you!” And then she looked up at me with her tear-stained eyes and said, “This is how you teach children, by making them cry?” And it was such a clenching reminder — she won not only the argument, but she won life with that statement. I just burst out laughing, and I think they were so surprised that I burst out laughing, that they did too.
Courage means feeling all those hard human emotions — all that uncertainty and anxiety — and getting the job done anyway.
Integrity means having the courage to do what is right, and what is aligned with your values, no matter the situation.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
When it’s obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.
Diversity is celebrated. Every person is invaluable and irreplaceable. The ethnic, social, and religious distinctions that divide society disappear in Christ. Our differences become our strengths.
Vision leaks, so share it over and over and over again. If you don’t sometimes feel like you’re sharing it too much, you’re not sharing it enough.
You can’t ever share the vision enough. Many people will forget the vision an hour after you share it, so share it again and again and again. People are attracted to and motivated by a God-sized vision. A God-sized vision unifies a church, attracts resources, motivates volunteers, and unites strong leaders. Sharing the God-sized vision is one of the most important jobs of the pastor.
If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won’t require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without.
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
People simply feel better about themselves when they’re good at something.
I have no time for shame.
I have respect for tradition, but a passion for the truth.
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
D
The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.
It’s more important to do the big things well than to do the small things perfectly.
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Feel your feelings,
Let them show,
Label them, and
Watch them go.
All Christians are called to be hospitable. But it is more than serving a meal or filling a bed, opening our door — it is to open ourselves, our hearts to the needs of others. Hospitality is not just shelter but the quality of welcome behind it.
There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.
The largest part of what we call “personality” is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
We start off in childhood believing parents might have access to a superior kind of knowledge and experience. They look, for a while, astonishingly competent. Our exaggerated esteem is touching, but also intensely problematic, for it sets them up as the ultimate objects of blame when we gradually discover that they are flawed, sometimes unkind, in areas ignorant and utterly unable to save us from certain troubles. It can take a while, until the fourth decade or the final hospital scenes, for a more forgiving stance to emerge. Their new condition, frail and frightened, reveals in a compellingly physical way something which has always been true psychologically: that they are uncertain vulnerable creatures motivated more by anxiety, fear, a clumsy love and unconscious compulsions than by godlike wisdom and moral clarity — and cannot, therefore, forever be held responsible for either their own shortcomings or our many disappointments.
He who sings frightens away his ills.
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
Worrying far too early means worrying far too much.
Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.
99 percent of statistics only tell 49 percent of the story.
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks, learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.
There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.
Beware of endeavouring to be a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovate, is doomed to decline and extinction.
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
If you worry less about what people think of you, you can pick up an astonishing amount of information about them. You no longer leave conversations wondering what just happened. Other people’s minds and motives are finally revealed.
Just say “no.” Never suggest lunch with people you don’t want to have lunch with. They will be much less disappointed than you think.
There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it; some just do it more confidently.
Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.
Never turn down a free meal.
Enlightenment is the “quiet acceptance of what is.” I believe the truly enlightened beings are those who refuse to allow themselves to be distressed over things that simply are the way they are.
E
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others see.
A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
When the solution is simple, God is answering.
Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.
Enthusiasm is my superpower. One might say that confidence yields the same result. I disagree. Confidence is about yourself, enthusiasm is about something else. Confidence is impressive, but enthusiasm is infectious. Confidence is serious, enthusiasm is fun.
It is better to have one person working with you than three people working for you.
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity.
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership.
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow the small ones.
Envy is ignorance.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Men are what their mothers made them.
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
Whatever course you decided upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to the end requires courage.
Beware the tyranny of making small changes to small things. Rather, make big changes to big things.
Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on… Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.
The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.
Don’t talk about your philosophy; embody it.
Progress is not achieved by luck or accident, but by working on yourself daily.
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.
A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.
No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.
F
One right and honest definition of business is mutual helpfulness.
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping it together is progress. Working together is success.
It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
It’s not that I’m not productive.
It’s not that I have no time.
It’s not that I’m too busy.
It’s usually that the task is not clearly defined.
It has been said in crisis intervention that what must be done eventually, should be done immediately.
No one has ever become poor by giving.
When we are no longer able to change the situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
For want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For want of a horse the rider was lost,
For want of a rider the battle was lost,
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Know what you’ll say no to.
The best measure of quality thinking is your ability to accurately predict the consequences of your ideas and subsequent actions.
I’d rather live with a good question than a bad answer.
Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.
G
To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like.
All of the great leaders of their time have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of the people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a simple working system.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.
If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs.
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
If we have optimism without empathy then it doesn’t matter how much we master the secrets of science. We’re not really solving problems, we’re just working on puzzles.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
When you were born, who are your parents, where did you grow up? None of us earns these things. These things were given to us. So when we strip away all of our luck and privilege, and we consider where we’d be without them, it becomes much easier to see someone who’s poor and say, “That could be me.” And that’s empathy.
The most important elements in business are facts. Get the real facts, not the obvious facts or assumed facts or hoped-for facts. Get the real facts. Facts don’t lie.
Anxiety is an emotion of scarcity. It whispers that there’s not enough, that we can’t survive this… But we serve a God of abundance. With Him there is always more grace, more love, more whatever we need in any given moment.
Congregation singing is a holy act, and as I organize my thoughts, I hear my old pastor, Alistair Begg, reminding that in our song worship, we have to be spiritually alive (dead people don’t sing), spiritually assisted (through the enabling of the Holy Spirit), and spiritually active (committed to daily walking with the Lord).
You know how long it takes to do simple? About ten times longer than quick and dirty.
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better you should leave your work.
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
You are not your résumé; you are your work.
Don’t let uncertainty talk you into pursuing a backup plan instead of your purpose.
God isn’t afraid of our doubts; He’s way more concerned when we fake it.
Fear calls out our doubts; God calls out our names.
Love difficult people. You’re one of them.
The way we deal with uncertainty says a lot about whether Jesus is ahead of us leading, or behind us just carrying our stuff.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moving forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
The finish line is for the ego. The journey is for the soul.
I don’t want my children to be what I want them to be. I want them to become everything God created them to be.
Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are stiffened.
Always appoint an hour at which you’ll see a man, and if he’s a minute late don’t bother with him. A fellow who can be late when his own interests are at stake is pretty sure to be when yours are.
Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking.
It’s been my experience that when an office begins to look like a family tree, you’ll find worms tucked away snug and cheerful in most of the apples.
One of the first things a boss must lose is his temper — and it must stay lost. Noise isn’t authority and there’s no sense in ripping and roaring and cussing around the office when things don’t please you. For when a fellow’s given to that, his men secretly won’t care whether he’s pleased or not. The world is full of fellows who could take the energy which they put into useless cussing of their men and double their business with it.
The man who can make up his mind quick, makes up other people’s minds for them. Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clear and straight and lays bare the fat and the lean; indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
You can’t do the biggest things in the world unless you handle men; and you can’t handle men if you’re not in sympathy with them; and sympathy begins in humility.
If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious.
When experts are wrong it is often because they are experts on an earlier version of the world.
It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone, you feel happy. If you are cruel, you are unhappy. And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back.
Sensitive people need downtime not because they’re weak, but because they experience life in high definition. Breaks are key to processing the world’s vibrant colors, intricate patterns, and profound emotions. Embrace the quiet; it’s where the magic of deep understanding happens.
Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit. People form habits and habits form futures. If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones. You are the kind of person you are because you have formed the habit of being that kind of person, and the only way you can change is through habit.
You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
As it goes with leaders, so it goes with the whole organization.
Forgiveness doesn’t change what happened in the past, but it can change what happens in the future.
God can do more with your surrender than you can do with your control.
God often guides by what He doesn’t provide.
Good can be the enemy of great.
Good things are not necessarily God things.
I’d argue that people today aren’t rejecting Christ so much as they’re rejecting the church.
It’s the things that no one sees that bring the results everyone wants. Stop trying. Start training.
Just because what you do is invisible doesn’t mean it’s not important.
The clearer your vision becomes, the easier it is to guard what God calls you to do.
The New Testament is peppered with “one another” reminders. While Scripture says to love one another, encourage one another, offer hospitality to one another, be kind to one another, many people are content tolerating one another, if not ignoring one another.
The truth: You have what you need. Watch out for excuses. Whenever you’re tempted to whine about what you don’t have, remember that God has given you everything you need to do everything He wants you to do.
Those who have it stick with what brings it.
To be great at a few things and experience it, you’ll have to say no to many things.
When focus increases, options decrease.
Grief is not a disorder, a disease, or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.
“Unreasonable,” “unrealistic,” and “impractical” are all words used to marginalize a person or idea that fails to conform with conventionally expected standards.
H
Let someone love you just the way you are — as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.
As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.
Now that all your worry has proved such an unlucrative business, why not find another job?
Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don’t want to do it.
Management was originally invented to solve two problems: the first — getting semi-skilled employees to perform repetitive activities competently, diligently, and efficiently; the second — coordinating those efforts in ways that enabled complex goods and services to be produced in large quantities. In a nutshell, the problems were efficiency and scale, and the solution was bureaucracy, with its hierarchical structure, cascading goals, precise role definitions, and elaborate rules and procedures… Equipping organizations to tackle the future would require a management revolution no less momentous than the one that spawned modern industry.
Failure happens all the time. It happens every day in practice. What makes you better is how you react to it.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
I think when you’re trying to improve, the most important thing is to always have a plan.
Ability and willingness are not the same thing.
If you’re depressed or anxious, you’re not weak and you’re not crazy — you’re a human being with unmet needs.
The secret to our enduring brand lies in delivering an experience rather than just a collection of products and services.
Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.
Lord, now that I have Your love in my heart, teach me how to give it away.
I wasn’t raised to allow a mistake to determine my future.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
It’s hard to resist the magical thinking that the work habits of great writers are the key to their greatness.
I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.
Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering — because you can’t take it all in at once.
Laughing at our own mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
Nothing can replace courage, a resounding motivation and that little bit of luck.
No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.
The cause of most of man’s unhappiness is sacrificing what he wants most for what he wants now.
I am a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.
Those who are determined to be “offended” will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
Love is like pi — natural, irrational, and very important.
Beware of destination addiction — a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job, and with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.
We are not nearly as important as we think we are — and even if we are important, the passage of time is an unforgiving leveler.
Restoration is God making our mess of a life into a masterpiece. Where our mess becomes our message, regardless of where we are in our journey, even in the winter of our lives.
Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them.
Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.
If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.
Children are our most valuable resource.
You manage things; you lead people.
I don’t outline at all. I don’t find it useful, and I don’t like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.
To be a writer — this may seem trite, I realize — you have to actually write. You have to write every day, and you have to write whether you feel like it or not. Perhaps most importantly, write for an audience of one — yourself. Write the story you need to tell and want to read. It’s impossible to know what others want so don’t waste time trying to guess. Just write about the things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.
Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve.
Folks who never do any more than they are paid for, never get paid for any more than they do.
The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.
Thoroughness characterizes all successful men. Genius is the art of taking infinite pains. All great achievement has been characterized by extreme care, infinite painstaking, even to the minutest detail.
My wife made me a millionaire. I used to have three million.
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Creative work and breakthroughs require concentration. No one does their best thinking in a constant barrage of interruption.
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
Honesty is making our words align with reality. Integrity is making reality align with our words.
Sadly, I have met very few people who have a plan for their life. Most are passive spectators, watching their lives unfold, one day at a time. They are reactive rather than proactive. They may plan their careers, the building of a new home, or even a vacation. But it never occurs to them to plan their life.
Social media is the greatest leadership tool ever invented. It gives you the opportunity to amplify your voice, extend your influence, and create a tribe of passionate followers who want to hear from you.
You can never underestimate the amount of energy and frequency you must give to vision casting. You can never underestimate it.
I
In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can’t be two people. Instead, you have to inspire the next guy down the line and get him to inspire his people.
Every leader needs to clearly explain the top three things the organization is working on. If you can’t, you’re not leading well.
Often he who does too much does too little.
J
Set your goals high and don’t stop till you get there.
I see no reason why I should be consciously wrong today because I was unconsciously wrong yesterday.
I am a big fan of outlining. I write an outline. Then a slightly more detailed outline. Then another with even more detail. Sentences form, punctuation is added, and eventually it all turns into a book.
Fall seven times. Stand up eight.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The strongest man is the one who forgets the most.
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
Earn your leadership every day.
I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.
I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.
K
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.
We did our duty, but we lost our humanity.
Everyone likes chasing shiny big objects all the time. What’s not to like? They are big. They are shiny. But a lot of progress in life comes from doing the everyday small things better. A small improvement, every single day, to move the ball a little more forward.
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
Winning doesn’t always mean getting first place; it means getting the best out of yourself.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Worse than being blind would be to be able to see but not have any vision.
Don’t let success go to your head. Don’t let failure go to your heart.
The Bible says that our real problem is that every one of us is building our identity on something besides Jesus.
I am going to judge my circumstances by Jesus’ love, not Jesus’ love by my circumstances.
I tend to think a fully formed Christian is somebody who finds Christianity both rationally and intellectually credible, but also emotionally and existentially true and satisfying.
If I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential.
While we want doubts to give way to faith, we should be merciful and patient with those who are still in a doubt-troubled place.
The world can’t save itself. That’s the message of Christmas.
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
I look forward to a great future for America — a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
The problems of this world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
If it looks good, you’ll see it. If it sounds good, you’ll hear it. If it’s marketed right, you’ll buy it. But if it’s real, you’ll feel it.
As we give, we find that “sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven.” And in the end, we learn that it was no sacrifice at all.
The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.
A genuine leader is not a seeker of consensus but a molder of consensus.
Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question: Is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: Is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it simply because it is right.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.
You don’t have to see the entire staircase to take the first step.
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us — we start editing ideas before we have them.
Do not be dismayed by the brokenness in the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.
And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.
Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose.
Use your liberty to promote ours.
L
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
Into every life crap will fall.
Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.
A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.
To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate. When the best leader’s work is done the people say, “We did it ourselves!”
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Pay and profit tell you that you are supplying a need and filling other people’s wants. They are not the motivation for your work, they are the validation of your work.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.
Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
There are just some kind of men who — who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.
There are so many more important things to worry about than how you’re perceived by strangers.
Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with.
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.
Don’t scorn your life because it’s not dramatic, or it’s impoverished, or it looks dull, or it’s workaday. Don’t scorn it. It is where poetry is taking place if you’ve got the sensitivity to see it. If your eyes are open.
Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinity joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of. Our attention would have been on God.
We may ignore, but can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him.
We read to know we are not alone.
When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.
It isn’t what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class.
Does giving your piece of mind bring peace of mind? Or is it better to be silent and let the war inside subside?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.
I will prepare and someday my chance will come.
In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
It’s better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
That some achieve greatness is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.
Long-term success is the accumulation of success achieved daily.
It’s not whether you get knocked down. It’s whether you get up.
Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.
The quality of person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.
Our preachers weren’t always right, but they were never in doubt.
If you’re looking for a place with no change, try a soda machine.
Someday you’re going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.
If you don’t have talent, you’ve got to have tenacity.
The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.
Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart.
The real battle is won in the mind. It’s won by guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit and think about it, plotting and planning to improve. Attending to the detail. Work on their weaknesses and overcome them. Because they can.
M
Politics have no relation to morals.
If you, as a leader, are unwilling to accept responsibility to help solve the problems of the present, it defies logic to trust you to provide solutions for the future.
There’s only one guy here in this room who knows whether you’re going to make it, or fail. And that’s you. Go to it, gentleman. And always give it everything.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Remind thyself, in the darkest moments, that every failure is only a step toward success. Your life will never be the same again.
At one magical instant, the page of a book — that string of confused, alien ciphers — shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
Good advice helps you find the solution to your problem. Great advice helps you find you were solving the wrong problem.
A good life is not a life without problems. A good life is a life with good problems.
There have been times when I felt conflicted and confused, where I mourned for a past self that I knew I would never see again while anxiously awaiting a future self who seemingly would never come.
Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
A satisfied customer allows you to do your job.
The customer doesn’t care about internal metrics. The customer cares about solving their problem.
Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow.
Grief is the reminder that love was present, and that even if it’s no longer in its original form, that love still exists.
Being positive in a negative situation is not naïve. It’s leadership.
Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.
Presents are symbolic. When you give them in your personal life, they should show that you are paying attention to the person to whom you’re giving them.
There is a big difference between being moral and being morally arrogant.
You were born an original. Don’t die a copy.
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
Dreams don’t work unless you do.
If we’re going to be growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.
The more concerned you become with things you can’t control, the less you will do to improve the things you can control.
You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
Faith in God includes faith in His timing.
Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance.
Study a masterpiece, take it apart, study its architecture, its vocabulary, its intent. Underline, make notes in the margins, and after a few years, go back and read it again.
Freedom is the realization that it is sufficient to simply be a human being.
To succeed in life you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone.
When you live your life knowing the calling of God, you will become a rare commodity in a world searching for direction.
Leadership is a verb, and productive leadership is an art.
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Find a need and fill it.
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man, for it is the image of God.
Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.
Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.
All we are is a collection of our experiences, so you’ve gotta make the best of them.
When you can’t
The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man. What a man is, survives him. It can never be buried.
Organizations who win, think deeply, choose wisely, and act decisively.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the compliacted simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
The best way to guarantee success is by preemptively engaging systems to reduce friction for positive habits, and increase friction for negative ones.
Think to thank. In these three words are the finest capsule course for a happy marriage, formula for enduring friendship, and a pattern for personal happiness.
A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with — that’s poverty — but how efficiently we can put first things first. When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.
Don’t let the past steal your present.
Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.
One data point is not a trend.
Never underestimate a child’s ability to get into more trouble.
Usage is like oxygen for ideas.
I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded by having a long attention span.
Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.
May we be consumed with the Creator of all things rather than with things created.
Doing things doesn’t make us busy. It makes us productive. Procrastination is what makes us busy.
The best speakers know enough to be scared… the only difference between the pros and the novices is that the pros have trained the butterflies to fly in formation.
You want to be extra rigorous with making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it.
N
I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.
In times of uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call; a common man with uncommon desire to succeed. Forged by adversity, he stands alongside America’s finest special operations forces to serve his country and the American people, and to protect their way of life. I am that man.
We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. The execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required, yet guided by the very principles I serve to defend.
A great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
Even siblings we don’t see, who live differently from us, who move in their own world, may be shoring up our lives, our sense of family, our feeling of being at home in the world without our knowing it.
Life is too short to spend forty to fifty hours around people who do nothing but stress you out and make you desire to go stick your head in a blender.
When a team feels like a family, they will go all out to love and serve one another.
As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to putting people and things in their “right” place.
The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
O
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.
If someone breaks your heart, just punch them in the face. Seriously. Punch them in the face and go get some ice cream.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.
A friend awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.
Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.
In a society that profits from your self-doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act.
The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.
Children are like messages we are sending to the future that we will not see.
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
The biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: The compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk.
High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears, and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
P
Holy people glory, not in their holiness, but in Christ’s cross; for the holiest saint is never more than a justified sinner and never sees himself in any other way.
You know that place between sleep and awake? The place where you can still remember dreaming. That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.
Physical activity is more restful than we expect, and mental rest is more active than we realize.
When we define ourselves by our work, by our dedication and effectiveness and willingness to go the extra mile, then it’s to see the rest as the negation of all those things.
Without fear there cannot be courage.
Innovation is not absolutely necessary, but then neither is survival.
In the short term, you are as good as your intensity. In the long term, you are only as good as your consistency.
Leverage makes a terrible master but an excellent servant.
Allow yourself to be a beginner. No one starts off excellent.
Let no one say that I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the material is new. In playing tennis, both players use the same ball, but one plays it better.
We do not care about our reputation in towns where we are only passing through.
Start where you are. Use what you’ve got. Do what you can.
Always do more than is required of you.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something.
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
If I only had three words of advice, they would be, “Tell the truth.” If I got three more words, I would add, “All the time.”
Nothing can stand in the way of the man who focuses his entire self on a problem.
Anger is almost always an emotion for people who wish to control others while simultaneously failing to control themselves.
Lead and inspire people. Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be led.
A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary, an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.
Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.
There are no experts in the company of Jesus. We are all beginners.
No one wants to learn from mistakes, but we cannot learn enough from successes to go beyond the state of the art.
Something is mighty wrong with our priorities when professing Christian men joke about their wives, joke about their children, and joke about God, but fight to the death over their favorite sports team.
I don’t believe in writer’s block. Think about it — when you were blocked in college and had to write a paper, didn’t it always manage to fix itself the night before the paper was due? Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
We so often define success as the absence of mistakes instead of the presence of something of worth. That leads us to fear and procrastination, instead of ambition and calculated risks.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Marking a book is literally an experience of your differences or agreements with the author. It is the highest respect you can pay him.
When my father didn’t have my hand, he had my back.
It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
Guilt is the flip side of prestige, and they’re both horrible reasons to do something.
I have long believed that critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naïveté.
Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.
Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through an argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.
God’s voice speaks
deeper than what hurts,
brighter than what is dark,
more enduring than what is lost,
truer than what has happened.
A lot of people run to see who’s the fastest. I run to see who has the most guts.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away.
I’m keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) that you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.
The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.
Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes to drain it dry.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
Q
Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.
Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.
I really believe that success is just getting up one more time than you fall. It doesn’t come from one brilliant idea, but from a bunch of small decisions that accumulate over the years. And you shouldn’t underestimate the amount of work that’s involved, the amount of fear that’s involved.
Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.
R
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
People who live far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyle can’t fathom.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Success is finding satisfaction in giving a little more than you take.
If you don’t care, why should they?
Have an impossible dream.
Ain’t no sense worrying about the things you got control over ’cause if you got control over ’em, ain’t no sense worrying. Ain’t no sense worrying about the things you got no control over ’cause if you got no control over ’em, ain’t no sense worrying.
Most people have no idea of the great capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.
One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
When fear knocks, let faith answer the door.
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
Today’s human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow’s conflicts.
When I hear people talk about juggling, or the sacrifices they make for their children, I look at them like they’re crazy, because “sacrifice” infers that there was something better to do than being with your children.
Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
I will pay more for the ability to deal with people before any other ability under the sun.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Diplomacy is the art of saying, “Nice doggie,” until you can find a rock.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
Either you run the day or the day runs you.
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
True restfulness, though, is a form of awareness, a way of being in life. It is living ordinary life with a sense of ease, gratitude, appreciation, peace, and prayer. We are restful when ordinary life is enough.
No such thing as spare time,
no such thing as free time,
no such thing as down time.
All you got is life time.
Go.
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.
We cannot always build the future of our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
I have a horror of words that are not translated into deeds, of speech that does not result in action.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, everyone. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am learning this: We can be mended.
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.
Outer order, inner calm.
What you do every day matters more than what you do every once in a while.
Someone reading a book is a sign of order in the world.
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.
In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
The older I get, the smarter my father seems to get.
Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.
The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.
Yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s games.
Metaphors are prisms that we can turn and turn and turn again, and the light and the color refracts and reflects, brightly, into our hearts, each time a different color.
When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this — that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked.
S
A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Books are key to understanding the world and participating in a democratic society.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
Tyrants and autocrats have always understood that literacy, learning, books and newspapers are potentially dangerous. They can put independent and even rebellious ideas in the heads of their subjects.
In teamwork, silence isn’t golden; it’s deadly.
The mark of a great man is one who knows when to set aside the important things in order to accomplish the vital ones.
Work hard.
Work harder.
Work harder than that.
All it takes is one idea to solve an impossible problem.
What would you attempt if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can’t expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don’t exceed the employees’ expectations of management.
Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.
We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.
If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
It is not to your benefit to see and hear everything. Many injuries ought to pass over us; if you ignore them, you get no more injury from them.
Our fears are always more numerous than our dangers.
We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application — not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech — and learn them so well that words become works.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
I can’t tell you the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.
Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Worry about what you’re doing.
They say alcohol is a man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says to love your enemies.
Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Sometimes you have to forget what’s gone, appreciate what still remains, and look forward to what’s coming next.
The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is that I’m not afraid to DIE on a treadmill. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, but if we get on a treadmill together, there are two things: one, you’re getting off first, or two, I’m gonna DIE. It’s really that simple.
Beware the busyness of a barren life.
You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by. It’s actions, not words, that matter.
In God we trust; all others bring data.
Do the hard things first.
Knowledge is like paint: If you don’t apply it, it just doesn’t do any good.
This is a tension to be managed, not a problem to be solved.
We don’t drift in good directions. We discipline and prioritize ourselves there.
There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
The light by which we see the world is not something we produce; the light enters us through the glow of God’s love, and then we radiate this light onto the world.
Do you what you do because Jesus is watching, not so you’ll end up on some top 100 church list or be the envy of the next pastors gathering. That stuff doesn’t matter. Be innovative because you believe people matter and you want to please Jesus.
The goal isn’t innovation. The goal is effectiveness. We strive for innovation because we want to be effective.
Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the dominance of outward conditions.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligbly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.
Don’t try to win over the haters. You’re not the jackass whisperer.
Give yourself permission to claim your life.
When Chuck House wanted to develop the oscilloscope for HP, David Packard told him to abandon the project. Chuck went on “vacation” and came back with $2 million in orders. Packard later gave him an award inscribed with an accolade for “extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering.”
There is nothing stronger in the world than gentleness.
Don’t worry about criticism from people that you wouldn’t seek advice from.
Let the light inside you be brighter than the light shining on you.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
T
You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot.
We worry about what a child will be tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.
We’re not human beings having a spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a human experience.
The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that makes it necessary.
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.
No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions. He had money as well.
You don’t win by just being against things, you only win by being for things and making your message perfectly clear.
Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
No one is so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
I said, “Somebody should do something about that.” Then I realized I am somebody.
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
There are no winners in a competition of pain.
Sometimes when we get overwhelmed we forget how big God is.
Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.
I don’t know if life is greater than death. But love was more than either.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
It is wiser to find out than to suppose.
It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Stay away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.
If you’re depressed, you’re living in the past.
If you’re anxious, you’re living in the future.
If you’re at peace, you’re living in the present.
U
Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.
Saying no has always been important, but perhaps never as essential a skill as it is today.
The greatest thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
V
My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person: he believed in me.
If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
It’s easy to believe our own excuses, particularly if they’re good ones.
We don’t build the lives we want by saving time. We build the lives we want, and then time saves itself.
We learn something new every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
One of the things I firmly believe about seemingly risky decisions is that you can’t fully imagine how things can be better while you’re in the thing you don’t quite like.
They can conquer who believe they can.
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
Worry is belief gone wrong. Because you don’t believe that God will get it right. But peace — peace is belief that exhales. Because you believe that God’s provision is everywhere — like air.
W
Demos, not memos.
Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.
Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
Alice Walker
Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best but legendary.
Do more than belong: participate.
Do more than care: help.
Do more than believe: practice.
Do more than be fair: be kind.
Do more than forgive: forget.
Do more than dream: work.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
We see that it is not the task of our Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.
Don’t think about making art; just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.
Show me a man with both feet on the ground, and I’ll show you a man who can’t put his pants on.
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simply, really. Double your rate of failure.
It’s surprising how hard we’ll work when the work is done just for ourselves.
We’re not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery — it recharges by running.
You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive.
Never burn bridges. Today’s junior jerk, tomorrow’s senior partner.
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.
The great opposition to reading is what I allow to fill my time instead of reading. To say we have no time to read is not really true; we simply have chosen to use our time for other things, or have allowed our time to be filled to the exclusion of reading. So don’t add reading to your to-do list. Just stop doing the things that keep you from reading. But read.
Faith, even if it’s a feeble faith, is trusting in spite of not knowing all of the answers. Like a child would trust a good parent. The child might not be able to understand why he can’t do something, but he knows he is loved. Good parents would never hurt their children.
All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness.
Of all things, guard against neglecting God in that secret place of prayer.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say that you did not know.
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems.
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
[The church] is a place where it’s okay not to be okay. You don’t have to fake perfection. Just come as you are with your past, pain, challenges, and junk. God promises to meet you where you are, but He won’t leave you there.
When all else fails, take a vacation.
In his 43rd year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
Education is the mother of leadership.
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.
All good work is done in defiance of management.
You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.
X
Humility does not make you better than everyone else; it makes you different from many.
Y
I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.
Don’t ever wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.
When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.
There are three essentials to leadership: humility, clarity, and courage.
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Z
There is no greater discovery than seeing God as the author of your destiny.
The world was made for the body. The body was made for the soul. And the soul was made for God.
Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not the merits of who receives them.
Every choice you make has an end result.
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.
Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
Clutter is the official language used by corporations to hide their mistakes.