Quotes Collection

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Thinking is the very essence of, and the most difficult thing to do in business and in life. Empire builders spend hour-after-hour on mental work . . . while others party. If you’re not consciously aware of putting forth the effort to exert self-guided integrated thinking . . . then you’re giving in to laziness and no longer control your life.

My Tai Ji teacher Chungliang Al Huang asking us why we’re all in such a hurry. Why we love efficiently and speed so much. If the end of the game is death, the most efficient thing to do is die. The point is to live.

We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.

Keep talking (writing?) – you’ll think of something to say.

There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world.

The greatest enemy of a good plan is (the dream of) the perfect plan.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

How can you ever out-perform what you’ve decided is possible?

Those who say it cannot be done, should stay out of the way of those doing it!

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, champagne in one hand – strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, “WOO HOO - what a ride!

Fake it until you make it.

In the future, the only people who will ever hire you will be your regular blog readers. That’s already starting to happen some people I know. Start blogging YESTERDAY and get building traffic.

As you ponder your “message,” consider the immortal words of Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com : “If you can’t describe your position in eight words or less, you don’t have a position.”

At times, to be silent is to lie.

A wise friend of mine once told me that tuition is what lessons cost. He said, “Normally a $1,000 lesson costs a $1,000. That’s your tuition for learning the lesson. Sometimes you get a million dollar lesson for free, but not very often”.

I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

This letter is so long because I do not have time to make it shorter.

When the fool learns the Way, He laughs at it.
Yet if the fool did not laugh at it,
It would not be the Way.
Indeed, if you are seeking the Way,
Listen for the laughter of fools.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

Can concentration and focus be seen like a muscle that atrophies without regular use?

There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices.

Hope is not a strategy.

If you give your son only one gift let it be enthusiasm.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

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 and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we un-consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we feel liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Language is the source of all misunderstandings.

We should not expect good work to be acknowledged; and where it is, we should not expect it to be welcomed. Rather, the strength of a creative impulse is measured by the strength of opposition it meets.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

Wake up every day, as if it was on purpose!

You gotta kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.

Don’t try and teach a pig to sing. It just frustrates you and it annoys the pig.

The sentence for attempted murder should be the same as the sentence for successful murder. Otherwise we’re just rewarding incompetence.

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.”

An assumption is what you arrive at when you get tired of thinking.

The worst thing you can do is be boring and vague. The second worst thing you can do is be boring and verbose and obvious. The first goal of copy is to get you to read more copy. The second goal is to tell a story that spreads. And then, finally, to have that story get people to take action.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

First you build your castles in the air, then you build the foundations under them.

Never let us negotiate out of fear but never let us fear to negotiate.

If I had to pick one quality that best predicts success (other than wanting to be successful) it would be the willingness to risk embarrassment.

I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

With sour faces we let a thousand bright and pleasant hours slip by unenjoyed and afterwards vainly sigh for their return when times are trying and depressing….we should cherish every present moment that is bearable, even the most ordinary, which with such indifference we now let slip by, and even with impatience push on.

Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, as in the feel of it.

As some of you will know, I decided some time ago that the secret to being current is to care and care deeply about events that will likely happen after you’re gone. If you only concern yourself about things that will happen in your own lifetime, the older you get, the grumpier you get and your opinions get progressively irrelevant.

We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when we are
dissatisfied with ourselves.

In e-mail, smileys are just a way of apologizing in advance for how you think you will be misunderstood.

Sometimes we need to change our strategy.
If we always do what we’ve always done,
we’ll always get what we’ve always gotten.

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides…

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only robs today of its strength.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

People have done all kinds of remarkable things because they thought they could. People routinely fail to do quite ordinary things because they assume they can’t.

Nothing is more powerful than habit.

Habit is overcome by habit.

Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.

The throng of petty troubles pains us more than the violence of a single one, however great it may be.

Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’

The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it’s true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You’ve just got to choose a subject, and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.

Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.

May you live all the days of your life.

Each man is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval – a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.

Inspiration is like picking up one of those blinky things in a video game that makes you invincible for awhile. You can do anything, go anywhere, and you don’t have to worry about it.

Those blinky things exist in real life too. It may be a picture, or some words, or a sound, or a idea, or a mistake, or a moment. Whatever it is, pick it up and run with it. Run with it like you stole it.

You can’t bottle up inspiration. You can’t put it in a ziplock, toss it in the freezer, and fish it out later. It’s instantly perishable if you don’t eat it while it’s fresh.

On Friday I was inspired by a few things. I swore off the weekend and dove into it. And I got about 2 weeks of work done in 24 hours. Inspiration is a time machine.

Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.

( From Inspiration is Magical )

Elizabeth Kubler Ross, author of the book On Death and Dying, asked people on their deathbeds this very question. What was their response? The number one response was: I wish I would have taken more chances. I feel like I lived my life playing it too safe. The number two response was: I wish I would have taken more time to reflect. I never stopped and smelled the roses in life. How would you answer this question?

http://www.humanbeingcurious.com/page15/page13/page13.html

I love you from before the moon was born, from millions and billions of years ago when the earth was a baby and there were no people I was still loving you.

Multi-tasking is dead. It never worked and it never will. Intelligent people love to sing its praises because it gives them permission to avoid the much more challenging alternative: focusing on one thing.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an art but a habit.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand – and melting like a snowflake.

The way to happiness: keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Fill your life with love. Scatter sunshine. Forget self, think of others. Do as you would be done by. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.

It’s too easy to criticize hope
And in the end, cynicism is a lousy strategy.

There is no catching up. There is only catching on.

Show me a problem that cannot be solved with technology and I’ll show you a problem I do not care about.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.

Those that succeed make changes. you’re afraid to change. you’d rather stay where you are and hope. Hope is for losers.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

If all you ever do is all you’ve ever done, then all you’ll ever get is all you ever got.

“Racism makes no sense. There’s so many reasons to dislike people…you’re going to go with color?”

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.

One man with a dream shall go forth and conquer until the dream shall become the present.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving the non-essential things undone.

For some of us, using a Blackberry helps us stay on top of things at the expense of getting to the bottom of things.

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

I am an old man and I’ve known lots of troubles but most of them have not come to pass.

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be ignited.

You untie a knot by picking at the worst part.

When a door of happiness closes, another opens. Often we look at the closed door, we do not see the one that’s been opened.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

The proper, wise balancing of one’s whole life may depend upon the feasibility of a cup of tea at an unusual hour.

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.

Physical fitness is the basis for all other forms of excellence.

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