Quotes, Thoughts, Ideas collected throughout my life
“Hope is not a method”
General Gordon R. Sullivan
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“What’s the point of being alive if you’re not silly? Life is too important to be serious. I have this theory that seriousness is the refuge of the shallow.”
Rita Mae Brown
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“It is great art in life to know how to sell wind. Most things are paid for in words, and by them you can remove impossibilities.“
Balthazar Gracien
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“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
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“What you think is what you are”
Andy Grove
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“What you think about, expands.”
“Change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change.”
“To change how people affect you, shift from thoughts about what they are doing to what you are thinking.”
“Stress does not exist in the world. There are only people thinking stressful thoughts.”
From the “Last Word on Power, “ by Tracy Goss
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“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi
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“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do”
Goethe
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“If you only travel when the sun is shining, you’ll never really get very far.”
Wayne Dyer
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“A man’s heaviest burden is a great potential”
Linus by Charles Schulz in Peanuts
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“Self importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow man. Self importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.”
Carlos Castaneda
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“The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
Wilhelm Stekel
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“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going”
Paul Gauguin
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“You gotta be in the moment. Who am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going?”
Paul Newman on acting
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“Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?”
David Mamet on elements of a story
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On fostering innovation:
“The most critical problem in our company is that nobody was ever punished for a decision he did not make. In contrast, when somebody actually makes a decision that turns out to be a bad one, we take an unhealthy pleasure in punishing the poor guy. How can you expect anybody to be innovative and take risks in such a culture?|
Anon. HR Director from a large corporation
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Live with intention
Walk to the edge
Listen hard
Practice wellness
Play with abandon
Laugh
Choose with no regret
Continue to learn
Appreciate your friends
Do what you love
Live as if this is all there is
Mary Anne Radmacher
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“Volunteering is reaching your hand out into the darkness to pull another’s hand back into the light, only to discover that it’s your own.”
Woody Brokenbur, Patient Courage Award winner
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“A man may keep very busy indeed without doing any thinking at all, and the easy course-the course of least resistance – is to keep so busy that there will be no time left over for thought. Almost every man tries to dodge thought or to find a substitute for it. We try to buy thoughts ready made and guaranteed to fit the shape of systems installed by experts. We try to substitute discussion for thought by organizing committees; a committee may function very well indeed as a clearing house for thoughts, but more commonly a committee organization is just an elaborate means of fooling one’s self into believing that a spell spent talking is the same as a spell spent thinking.”
Harvey Firestone from “Wisdom From the Robber Barons”
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“A committee is a group of people that keeps minutes and loses hours.”
Milton Berle
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Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe
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One of the ways of distinguishing function from form is to substitute a verb for a noun. Banking is essential, banks are not. Banks are things – bricks and mortar. Banking is a function. If I can divorce the function from the thing, I can think about how to deliver the function in radically different ways.”
Gary Hamil
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“The definition of Adventure is to accept the uncertainty, accept the anxiety, accept the doubts, prepare as well as you can, and jump.”
Bertrand Piccard – 1st man around the world in a balloon
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“Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole, experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller
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“People protect nothing more violently than the pretenses they live by.”
Allan Drury
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“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.”
Winston Churchill
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“Not all who wander are lost.”
JRR Tolkien
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“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
John Steinbeck
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“The real act of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls bloom”
Marcel Proust
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“It’s not what you look at that matters – it’s what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
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“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russell
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“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”
Winston Churchill
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“Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness, but the intractable power of stupidity.”
Adam Gopnick
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“The greater the ignorance, the greater the dogmatism.”
Sir William Osler
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Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”
Voltaire
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“Cultivate those who seek the truth but shun those who have found it.”
Vaclav Havel
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“Mural Dyslexia – a neural defect that keeps people from seeing the writing on the wall.”
“Where you sit, is where you stand.”
Dileep Bal, M.D.
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“It’s not that everything hasn’t been said, it’s just that everyone hasn’t said it yet.”
Mo Udall
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“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Adams
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“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”
Abraham Lincoln
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“I’ll think about tomorrow, tomorrow. I’ll think about the future, today.”
Anon
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If you are planning for one year, grow rice.
If you are planning for 20 years, grow trees.
If you are planning for centuries, grow men.
Chinese proverb
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Infinite gratitude for all things past.
Infinite mindfulness of all things present.
Infinite concern for all things future.
Zen Mantra
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The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp”’
John Berry
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The coming of old age is when you don’t follow up the best offer you’ve had in your whole life.
Anon
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“The people who matter, know. The people who don’t matter, don’t know.”
Joe Patterson – professional colleague
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“You have to be willing to discard ideas when they don’t work. You can’t be married to them.”
Designer of Barney’s store windows
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“Americans don’t like to be told what to do. They do like to be told what to think.”
Paul F. Tompkins
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The Dopelar Effect:
The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Ignoranus:
A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
Anon
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Things it took me 50 years to learn:
- Never lick a steak knife
- There is a fine line between “hobby” and mental illness
- If you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race has not achieved and will not achieve its potential, that word would be “meetings”
- When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often that individual is crazy!
Dave Berry
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“I’m a born pessimist, and I’ve never been disappointed.”
Robert Ostertag
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To stay young, capture the delight of life’s gifts.
Anon
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“You meet saints everywhere. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.”
“The greatest peace come from the knowledge that I have enough.”
On writing: “Don’t show off you have been to college. Make sure your reader is having a good time. Get to the who, when, where, what right away so the reader knows what is going on”
Kurt Vonnegut
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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
EL Doctorow
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“He who wills the ends, wills the means.”
Emmanuel Kant
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“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
“No man goes before his time – unless his boss leave early.”
“Time wounds all heels.”
Groucho Marx
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“Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.”
A.J. Liebling
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“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
Robert Frost
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“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.”
St. Augustine
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One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that was going on inside himself. He said,”It is between two wolves. One is evil: anger envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought for a moment and then asked, “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee replied simply. “The one I feed.”
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“We’ll execute our strategy in the usual way.” Dogbert the CEO says, “The powerful will delegate to the untalented until failure is achieved.”
Scott Adams in Dilbert
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“It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”
Henry David Thoreau
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“If your ears are stuffed with money, it’s hard to hear.”
Earl Warren
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“Common sense is the collection of prejudices, acquired by the age 18.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“Peace cannot be achieved by force, only by understanding.”
“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
Albert Einstein
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The object of a New Year is not that we should have a New Year. It is that we should have a new soul.”
G.K. Chesterton
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I will look every night to see the moon. And when there are clouds overhead, I will find the moon in my soul.”
Anon
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“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you”
Frank Lloyd Wright
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“It is never possible to deduce judgments of value from matters of fact.”
David Hume
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Seven Blunders of the world
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Commerce without morality
- Science without humanity
- Worship without sacrifice
- Politics without principle.
Mahatma Ghandi
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“There are two sorts of artists, one not being in the least superior over the other. One responds to the history of his or her art so far, and the other responds to life itself. What you respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”
Saul Steinberg
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“There is no key to the universe. You just have to point your way in one direction, keep going, keep going, keep going, and see what happens.”
Davy Rothbart
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“Every moment can be an opportunity to reach your real self – to meditate no matter where you are on what is going on around you. It is all a matter of where your consciousness is.”
“The abundant universe cannot provide to people who do not look outside themselves.”
Gerald
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“No road is too long with good company.”
Turkish Proverb
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“A goodbye isn’t painful unless you’re never going to say hello again.”
Anon
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In fiction…there are no mysteries (except deliberate ones) because the author tells us what is going on in the minds of his or her characters. The author knows exactly what they are thinking, and can swear to its veracity, because the author has made it all up and he or she is the only begetter and progenitor of their inner lives. …among the countless pleasures a good novel or short story offers – beguilement, suspense, amusement, melancholy, empathy education, style, etc. perhaps the most important and enduring gift is…the near miraculous possibility of experiencing other minds and inner lives other than one’s own.
William Boyd in “The Gifts of Reading”