Some great quotes. You may agree, disagree, or be offended. But at the very least should make you think.
It is better to ask forgiveness than permission. - Jesuit saying
“A man is as young as the woman he feels.” - Groucho Marx
“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” - Abba Eban
“I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” - Groucho Marx
“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.” - Groucho Marx
“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.” - George Bernard Shaw
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” - Winston Churchill
“It is not necesssary to understand things in order to argue about them.” - Caron de Beaumarchais
“I’ll always cherish the original misconception I had of you.” – unknown
“The problem with common sense is that most people are morons.” - Sarcasm Society
“One of the lessons of history is that Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.” - Will Durant
“Anyone who told you to be yourself couldn’t have given you any worse advice.” - Unknown
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” - Seinfeld
“100,000 sperm and you were the fastest?”- Unknown
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.
Mason Cooley, O Magazine, April 2004
Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.
Max Frisch
for good people to do evil
Religion is an insult
to human dignity.
With or without it
you would have
good people doing
good things and
evil people doing
evil things.
But
for good people
to do evil things,
that takes religion.
– Professor Steven Weinberg, 1999
“Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.”
“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.” Scott Adams
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
Jack Welch
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
Jack Welch
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack Welch
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
Jack Welch
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
Jack Welch
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
Jack Welch
My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
Jack Welch
Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
Jack Welch
Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
Scott Adams
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
Scott Adams
There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
Scott Adams
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
Scott Adams
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Jack Welch
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt. Henry J. Kaiser US industrialist (1882 – 1967)
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire
“If you wanna get loaded quick, start a religion”.
“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.”
- Decca Records Rejecting the Beatles, in 1962
We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- [Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962]
The young bull says, “Hey, let’s RUN down there
and have sex with one of them cows!”
Old bull looks at him and says, “Let’s WALK
down there and have sex with ALL of them.”
“They misunderestimated me!” -George W. Bush”
Suburbia – where they cut down trees and name streets after them
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
———-
Bush
“[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling.”—
Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”—Sept. 6, 2004, Poplar Bluff, Mo.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
“And so, in my State of the—my State of the Union—or state—my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation—I asked Americans to give 4,000 years—4,000 hours over the next—the rest of your life—of service to America. That’s what I asked—4,000 hours.” —Bridgeport, Conn., April 9, 2002
It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.
KABIR
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Voltaire
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
We’re neither pure; nor wise; nor good; we do the best we know.
As long as there are fools and rascals, there will be religions.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Voltaire
Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
Voltaire
Regimen is superior to medicine.
Voltaire
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Voltaire
The secret of being boring is to say everything.
Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire
You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
Voltaire
“Do you have blacks, too?”—To Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001
“Brie and cheese.”—Taunting a reporter who recently spent time on the West Coast, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 23, 2001
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.”
-Speaking during “PERSEVERENCE Month” at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”
“I think we agree, the past is over.”
“I have opinions of my own –strong opinions– but I don’t always agree with them.”
- George Bush, former U.S. President
—————
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov
“The internet is a great way to get on the net.”
- Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate
“I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada.”
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer
“Is tuna really Chicken?” – Jessica Simpson, after reading “Tuna, Chicken of the sea”
Stupid Quotes
“Most cars on our roads have only one occupant, usually the driver.”
- Carol Malia, BBC Anchorwoman
“If you give a person a fish, they’ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime.”
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice President
“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago”
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President
———————————
Which do you think is larger, the highest mountain on earth or the pile of bones that represents the lives that you have lived over and over in every realm governed by the patterns of your own karma? Greater, my friends, is the pile of bones than the highest mountain on earth.
THE BUDDHA
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight, since we do not possess it, and thus need not fear its loss.
JOHN CAGE
Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
CARL SAGAN
Those who are unawakened grasp their thoughts and feelings, their body, their perceptions and consciousness, and take them as solid, separate from the rest. Those who are awakened have the same thoughts and feelings, perceptions, body, and consciousness, but they are not grasped, not held, not taken as oneself.
THE BUDDHA
In Zen meditation we think non-thinking—that is, we think nothing. What this means is that our whole psychological mind ceases to function, and as a result, our whole being becomes united with the essence of mind, which we signify by Mind. You call this essence the God within you, absoluteness, ultimate reason—it doesn’t matter. No matter what you call it, to unite with this essence is the very reason we are gathered here to meditate.
ROBERT AITKEN
A little nonsense
now and then
Is cherished by
the wisest men.
ROALD DAHL
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Karma means you don’t get away with nothin’.
RUTH DENISON
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER
—–
I believe in the essential unity of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one person gains spiritually the whole world gains, and if one person falls, the world falls to that extent.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI
——-
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable. It is true.
THOMAS MERTON
–
Only our own searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It is like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching it, or a dog chasing its own tail. Although peace and happiness do not exist as an actual thing or place, they are always available, and accompany you every instant.
GENDUN RINPOCHE
———
Don’t play as if you’ve swallowed the metronome!
NADIA BOULANGER
When we are not sure, we are alive.
GRAHAM GREENE
—
The important thing is to do, and nothing else; be what it may.
PABLO PICASSO
A guru is like a fire. If you get too close you get burned; if you stay too far away, you don’t get enough heat.
TIBETAN PROVERB
The Buddha was wandering through India shortly after his enlightenment. Several men encountered him, and sensed something quite extraordinary about the handsome monk. “Are you a god?” they asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Well, are you a deva or an angel?”
“No.”
“Some kind of wizard or magician?”
“No,” he said again.
Finally, perplexed, the men asked, “Well, what are you?”
“I am awake,” he answered.
BUDDHIST MONDO
For minds obsessed by compulsive thinking and grasping, you simplify your meditation practices to just two words—“let go.”
AJAHN SUMEDHO
True enlightenment and wholeness arise when we are without anxiety about nonperfection.
THE THIRD PATRIARCH
Meditate and do and you shall know.
ELIZABETH BARRINGTON
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small—the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love.
HINDU SAGE
To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.
SHUNRYU SUZUKI
Better a handful of quietness
Than both hands full with toil
And much chasing the wind.
ECCLESIASTES
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is “look under foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS
It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.
KABIR
I must confess that I don’t have the faintest idea what my purpose is or what’s going on, and I never have. I became comfortable with that mystery a long time ago—that I would never know how any of these things fit together in any explicit way.
GARY SNYDER
I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be a success if I shall have left myself behind.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
1956, upon his return to England following a US tour, bandleader Ted Heath observes: “Rock ‘n’ roll is mainly performed by colored people for colored people and is therefore unlikely to prove popular in Britain”…
Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.
ITALIAN PROVERB
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
CHINESE PROVERB
“What it did really is make the business a one trick pony — and everything became about the three minutes, the single, the hit single,” “I think the album died with MTV. The culture in the record companies in the last 20 years has been to reward artists for three minutes of music, not for 40 minutes of music.” entertainment attorney Michael Guido tells FRONTLINE.
—
Seeing misery in views and opinions, without adopting any, I found inner peace and freedom. One who is free does not hold to views or dispute opinions. For a sage there is no higher, lower, nor equal, no places in which the mind can stick. But those who grasp after views and opinions only wander about the world annoying people.
THE SUTTA NIPATA
Willy Ley, a former head of the FDA, said it best when he said “What the Food and Drug Administration does and what the public thinks that it does are as different as night and day”.
“Displays no trace of imagination, good taste or ingenuity… It’s a stinkeroo.”
1939 New Yorker review of the film The Wizard of Oz.
For twelve years Naropa followed the great Indian sage Tilopa. Tilopa would say, “If you fetch me soup from the kitchen, then I might teach you.” Naropa would sneak in the kitchen, suffer a terrible beating at the hands of the kitchen staff, but emerge triumphant with the cup of soup. But Tilopa would only say, “I want another cup, go and fetch it.”
This kind of incident occurred over and over and over again, until Naropa’s sense of yearning for the teachings reached a crescendo. At that moment Tilopa gave Naropa the most profound initiation into the truth—he took off his sandal and slapped Naropa in the face. Suddenly that was it; there was nothing more Naropa needed.
TIBETAN MONDO
As far as Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between a sinner and a sage. . . . One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.
HUI-NENG
The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.
SRI NISARGADATTA
A beginning student complained to his master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Finally, he let the student go.
“Now how boring is your breath?” he asked.
ZEN MONDO
Do or do not, there is no try.
Yoda
Jedi master, from the
“Star Wars” series
“try is a noisy way of doing nothing.”
We are what we repeatedly do.
Aristotle (384bc-322bc)
Greek philosopher, physician
& scientist
Great Quotes on SUCCESS
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
-Abraham Lincoln
Perseverance is not a long race;
it is many short races one after another.
-Walter Elliott
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important
than any other one thing.
- Abraham Lincoln
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Greatness lies not in being strong,
but in the right use of strength.
- Henry Ward Beecher
Success is never final.
Failure is never fatal.
Courage is what counts.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
– Samuel Johnson
Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
- Francis Bacon
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation…
The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
- Jacob Bronowski
Footprints on the sands of time are not made by sitting down.
- unknown
One never notices
what has been done;
one can only see
what remains to be done.
- Marie Currie
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning;
but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing.
- George Eliot
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
A leader is one who
knows the way,
goes the way,
and shows the way.
- John C. Maxwell
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
– William James
Obstacles are those frightful things
you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
– Henry Ford
Equality:
After the game,
the king and the pawn
go into the same box.
– Italian Proverb
Character is like a tree
and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it;
the tree is the real thing.
– Abraham Lincoln
What would you attempt to do
if you knew you would not fail?
– Robert Schuller
We never know how far reaching
something we may think, say
or do today will affect the lives of
millions tomorrow.
- B.J. Palmer
The superior man is modest in his
speech, but exceeds in his actions.
- Confucius
What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you.
- Wayne Dyer
Empowerment is all about letting go so that others can get going.
– Kenneth Blanchard
Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
– Malcolm Forbes
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
- Barbara Johnson
Not every successful man is a good father.
But every good father is a successful man.
- R. Duvall
I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.
- Mario Cuomo
The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
- Benjamin Mays
According to aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly.
Its body weight is not the right proportion to its wingspan.
Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway.
– M. Sainte-Lague
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
– Henry Ford
The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry
is probably one of the secrets of our great men.
– Captain J.A. Hatfield
Success will not lower its standard to us. We must raise our standard to success.
- Rev. Randall R. McBride, Jr.
It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
– George Elliot
Talk does not cook rice.
- Chinese Proverb
Rule your mind or it will rule you.
– Horace
It is when the well is dry that we know the price of water.
– Ben Franklin
Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.
- George Halas
Attach yourself to your passion, but not to your pain.
Adversity is your best friend on the path to success.
– unknown
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation
with the bricks that others throw at him.
– Sidney Greenberg
To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd;
to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no else has seen.
– unknown
I am more afraid
of an army of 100 sheep
led by a lion
than an army of 100 lions
led by a sheep.
– Talleyrand
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
– Thomas Edison
How you spend your time
is more important than
how you spend your money.
Money mistakes can be corrected,
but time is gone forever.
– David Norris
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self.
– Aristotle
Outstanding leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers – not their minds.
– Unknown
Yesterday is a cancelled check;
Tomorrow is a promissory note;
Today is the only cash you have,
so spend it wisely.
– Kim Lyons
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.
One helps you make a living,
the other helps you make a life.
- Sandra Carey
Truth fears no trial.
– Proverb
If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.
- George B. Shaw, 1856 – 1950
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living.
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
– Dale Carnegie
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is:
a great capacity for hard work.
- Henry Ford, 1863 – 1947
Reputation is what people think you are.
Character is who you really are.
Take care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself.
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
– Richard Bach
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
- Tim Notke
Success is a journey, not a destination.
– Unknown
The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.
– Rosabeth Moss Cantor
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
- Ronald E. Osborn
If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.
– John Maxwell
If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.
- David Ambrose
Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.
-J.C. Penny
Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?
– Frank Scully
A competitive world has two possibilities for you: you can lose or, if you want to win, you can change.
– Lester C. Thurow
I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: try to please everybody.
– Mr. Herbert Bayard Swope
The secret of success is consistency of purpose.
– Benjamin Disraeli
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Bill Gates quotes (American Entrepreneur and Founder of Microsoft Co., b.1955)
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG”
“To create a new standard it takes something that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”
“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax”
Abraham Lincoln quotes (American 16th US President (1861-65), who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. 1809-1865)
“Tell me what you brag about and I’ll tell you what you lack”
Spanish Proverb
”Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leonardo da Vinci quotes (Italian draftsman, Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. 1452-1519)
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
George Bernard Shaw quotes (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)
“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.”
Lao Tzu quotes (Chinese taoist Philosopher, b.600 BC)
“To know and not to do is not to know”
“I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.”
Kahlil Gibran quotes (Lebanese born American philosophical Essayist, Novelist and Poet. 1883-1931)
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
Confucius quotes (China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC)
“Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”
Mark Twain quotes (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)
“Skill to do comes of doing”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“Knowledge exists to be imparted”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero quotes (Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC)
“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”
Anton Chekhov quotes (Russian playwright and master of the modern short story, 1860-1904)
“There is no knowledge that is not power”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
I have always known that at last I would take this road
But yesterday I did not know
It would be today.
NARIHARA
When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.
DOGEN
Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it. Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with Him. “God is in us and we in Him” must be made the most fundamental faith of all religions.
SOEN SHAKU
The human mind has absolute freedom as it’s true nature. There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained this realization. Do not doubt the possibilities because of the simplicity of this method.
DOGEN
Only within our own body, with its heart and mind, can bondage and suffering be found, and only here can we find true liberation.
THE BUDDHA
If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace. So wherever you are attached, let go of that and come back to the center. Learn to see all movement of life with balance and openness.
ACHAAN CHAH
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it.
CHARLOTTE JOKO BECK
Zen is not safe. Letting go is a big risk. People are scared out of their minds to let go. To really let go of everything. To let go of everything! That’s the big one, isn’t it?
MAURINE STUART
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
HENRY MILLER
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Sir Winston Churchill
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
Sir Winston Churchill
Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill
Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.
George Tooker
Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Norman Mailer (1923 – )
Drive thy business or it will drive thee.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.
David M. Ogilvy
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Just as the sun dispels darkness, the perfect sage has conquered the false habits of mind. He does not see the mind or thought derived from the mind.
NAGARJUNA
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore!
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
NICOLAS BOILEAU DESPRÉAUX
“When I say be skeptical of everything I mean it. Just because someone was elected to do a job doesn’t mean that person has any idea of what they’re doing.”- Sen. Bob Kerry
Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly, I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.
Business, customers
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton
To my customer. “I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.”
Unknown
Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck…because they do.
Unknown
Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin
When you serve the customer better, there’s always a return on your investment.
Kara Parlin
When you start viewing your customers as interruptions, you’re going to have problems.
Kate Zabriskie
Without great employees you can never have great customer service.
Richard F. Gerson
You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
Jerry Fritz
“I guess we’ll get through with them in a day.”
General George Custer at Little Bighorn
“I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor.”
George III of England
In an archery contest, when the stakes are earthenware tiles a contestant shoots with skill.
When the stakes are belt buckles he becomes hesitant, and if the stakes are pure gold he becomes nervous and confused.
There is no difference as to his skill but, because here is something he prizes, he allows outward considerations to weigh on his mind. All those who consider external things important are stupid within.
CHUANG-TZU
Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
the Tao Te Ching – Chapter 64
2. LETTING GO OF OPPOSITES.
It is the nature of the ordinary person, the person who is not yet at one with the Tao, to compare the manifestations of the natural qualities possessed by things. Such a person tries to learn of such qualities by distinguishing between their manifestations, and so learns only of their comparative manifestations.
So it is that the ordinary person might consider one thing beautiful when compared with another which he considers to be ugly; one thing skillfully made compared with another which he considers badly made. He knows of what he has as a result of knowing what he does not have, and of that which he considers easy through that which he considers difficult. He considers one thing long by comparing it with another thing which he considers short; one thing high and another low. He knows of noise through silence and of silence through noise, and learns of that which leads through that which follows.
When such comparisons are made by a sage, that is a person who is in harmony with the Tao, that person is aware of making a judgement, and that judgements are relative to the person who makes them, and to the situation in which they are made, as much as they are relative to that which is judged.
Through the experience and knowledge through which he has gained his wisdom, the sage is aware that all things change, and that a judgement which is right in one situation might easily be wrong in another situation. He is therefore aware that he who seems to lead does not always lead, and that he who seems to follow does not always follow.
Because of this awareness, the sage frequently seems neither to lead nor follow, and often seems to do nothing, for that which he does is done without guile; it is done naturally, being neither easy nor difficult, not big or small. Because he accomplishes his task and then lets go of it without seeking credit, he cannot be discredited. Thus, his teaching lasts for ever, and he is held in high esteem.
5. TRANQUIL BUT UNCEASING.
Those things which are in opposition with each other are not benevolent towards each other, and may even treat each other with contempt or malevolence.
>Although the creatures which are born of nature may be in opposition with each other, nature itself is in opposition to nothing for there is nothing for it to oppose. It acts without conscious intention, and it is therefore neither deliberately benevolent, contemptuous nor malevolent. In this respect the way of the Tao is the same as the way of nature. Therefore, even when acting in a benevolent manner, the sage does not act from any conscious desire to be benevolent.
Through his manner of breathing like a babe, he remains free of conscious desire, and so retains his tranquility. By this means he is empty of desire, and his energy is not drained from him.
Zen does not teach, it points.
D. T. SUZUKI
Busiuness
Robert Greenleaf, ATT
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
Theodore Rubin
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
John Foster Dulles
The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
Carl Jung
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Stephen Covey
You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.
Thomas J. Watson
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964),
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen (1953 – )
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
Arthur Rubinstein (1886 – 1982)
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Christopher Lasch
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936)
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb’s Journal
To err is human–and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Robert Orben
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Give no decision till both sides thou’st heard.
Phocylides
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
Robert Fritz
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955),
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940), “The Crack-Up” (1936)
It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
G. H. Hardy (1877 – 1947)
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924)
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
John Cage (1912 – 1992)
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885), ‘Histoire d’un crime,’ 1852
If the shopper feels like it was poor service, then it was poor service. we are in the customer perception business.
Mark Perrault, Rally Stores
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” -Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Play the music not the instrument.
Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times – Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher (1469 – 1527)
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change – Charles Darwin
Ignorance is always afraid of change – Jawaharlal Nehru, 1st prime minister of India (1889 – 1964)
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory – Dr W Edwards Deming, American management and total quality guru (1900 – 1993)
Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change – Tom Peters
When the rate of change inside an organization is slower than the rate of change outside the organization, the end is in sight – John Welsh, Chairman, General Electric
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it – Kurt Lewin
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them,
you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself” – er
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. – Robert Frost
If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can’t buy.
Don’t confuse movement with action.
Advice is what we ask for when we don’t trust ours.
“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don’t believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
“Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: ‘Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.’ I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine’s Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn’t known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
It is better to ask forgiveness than permission. - Jesuit saying
“A man is as young as the woman he feels.” - Groucho Marx
“History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.” - Abba Eban
“I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” - Groucho Marx
“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception.” - Groucho Marx
“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.” - George Bernard Shaw
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” - Oscar Wilde
“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” - Winston Churchill
“It is not necesssary to understand things in order to argue about them.” - Caron de Beaumarchais
“I’ll always cherish the original misconception I had of you.” – unknown
“The problem with common sense is that most people are morons.” - Sarcasm Society
“One of the lessons of history is that Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.” - Will Durant
“Anyone who told you to be yourself couldn’t have given you any worse advice.” - Unknown
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” - Seinfeld
“100,000 sperm and you were the fastest?”- Unknown
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.
Mason Cooley, O Magazine, April 2004
Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.
Max Frisch
for good people to do evil
Religion is an insult
to human dignity.
With or without it
you would have
good people doing
good things and
evil people doing
evil things.
But
for good people
to do evil things,
that takes religion.
– Professor Steven Weinberg, 1999
“Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.”
“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.” Scott Adams
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
Jack Welch
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
Jack Welch
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
Jack Welch
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
Jack Welch
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
Jack Welch
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
Jack Welch
My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
Jack Welch
Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
Jack Welch
Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
Scott Adams
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.
Scott Adams
There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
Scott Adams
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
Scott Adams
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Jack Welch
When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt. Henry J. Kaiser US industrialist (1882 – 1967)
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire
“If you wanna get loaded quick, start a religion”.
“We don’t like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.”
- Decca Records Rejecting the Beatles, in 1962
We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- [Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962]
The young bull says, “Hey, let’s RUN down there
and have sex with one of them cows!”
Old bull looks at him and says, “Let’s WALK
down there and have sex with ALL of them.”
“They misunderestimated me!” -George W. Bush”
Suburbia – where they cut down trees and name streets after them
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder
———-
Bush
“[T]he illiteracy level of our children are appalling.”—
Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”—Sept. 6, 2004, Poplar Bluff, Mo.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
“And so, in my State of the—my State of the Union—or state—my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation—I asked Americans to give 4,000 years—4,000 hours over the next—the rest of your life—of service to America. That’s what I asked—4,000 hours.” —Bridgeport, Conn., April 9, 2002
It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.
KABIR
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
Voltaire
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Voltaire
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge
To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.
We’re neither pure; nor wise; nor good; we do the best we know.
As long as there are fools and rascals, there will be religions.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.
It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books.
Voltaire (1694 – 1778)
Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Voltaire
Prejudice is opinion without judgement.
Voltaire
Regimen is superior to medicine.
Voltaire
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Voltaire
The secret of being boring is to say everything.
Voltaire
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire
You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.
Voltaire
“Do you have blacks, too?”—To Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001
“Brie and cheese.”—Taunting a reporter who recently spent time on the West Coast, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 23, 2001
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
“This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It’s what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve.”
-Speaking during “PERSEVERENCE Month” at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”
“I think we agree, the past is over.”
“I have opinions of my own –strong opinions– but I don’t always agree with them.”
- George Bush, former U.S. President
—————
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov
“The internet is a great way to get on the net.”
- Bob Dole, Republican presidential candidate
“I get to go to lots of overseas places, like Canada.”
- Britney Spears, Pop Singer
“Is tuna really Chicken?” – Jessica Simpson, after reading “Tuna, Chicken of the sea”
Stupid Quotes
“Most cars on our roads have only one occupant, usually the driver.”
- Carol Malia, BBC Anchorwoman
“If you give a person a fish, they’ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime.”
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice President
“It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago”
- Dan Quayle, former U.S. Vice-President
———————————
Which do you think is larger, the highest mountain on earth or the pile of bones that represents the lives that you have lived over and over in every realm governed by the patterns of your own karma? Greater, my friends, is the pile of bones than the highest mountain on earth.
THE BUDDHA
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
SIR ISAAC NEWTON
Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight, since we do not possess it, and thus need not fear its loss.
JOHN CAGE
Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.
CARL SAGAN
Those who are unawakened grasp their thoughts and feelings, their body, their perceptions and consciousness, and take them as solid, separate from the rest. Those who are awakened have the same thoughts and feelings, perceptions, body, and consciousness, but they are not grasped, not held, not taken as oneself.
THE BUDDHA
In Zen meditation we think non-thinking—that is, we think nothing. What this means is that our whole psychological mind ceases to function, and as a result, our whole being becomes united with the essence of mind, which we signify by Mind. You call this essence the God within you, absoluteness, ultimate reason—it doesn’t matter. No matter what you call it, to unite with this essence is the very reason we are gathered here to meditate.
ROBERT AITKEN
A little nonsense
now and then
Is cherished by
the wisest men.
ROALD DAHL
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Karma means you don’t get away with nothin’.
RUTH DENISON
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER
—–
I believe in the essential unity of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one person gains spiritually the whole world gains, and if one person falls, the world falls to that extent.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI
——-
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the Divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable. It is true.
THOMAS MERTON
–
Only our own searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it. It is like a vivid rainbow which you pursue without ever catching it, or a dog chasing its own tail. Although peace and happiness do not exist as an actual thing or place, they are always available, and accompany you every instant.
GENDUN RINPOCHE
———
Don’t play as if you’ve swallowed the metronome!
NADIA BOULANGER
When we are not sure, we are alive.
GRAHAM GREENE
—
The important thing is to do, and nothing else; be what it may.
PABLO PICASSO
A guru is like a fire. If you get too close you get burned; if you stay too far away, you don’t get enough heat.
TIBETAN PROVERB
The Buddha was wandering through India shortly after his enlightenment. Several men encountered him, and sensed something quite extraordinary about the handsome monk. “Are you a god?” they asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Well, are you a deva or an angel?”
“No.”
“Some kind of wizard or magician?”
“No,” he said again.
Finally, perplexed, the men asked, “Well, what are you?”
“I am awake,” he answered.
BUDDHIST MONDO
For minds obsessed by compulsive thinking and grasping, you simplify your meditation practices to just two words—“let go.”
AJAHN SUMEDHO
True enlightenment and wholeness arise when we are without anxiety about nonperfection.
THE THIRD PATRIARCH
Meditate and do and you shall know.
ELIZABETH BARRINGTON
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small—the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love.
HINDU SAGE
To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.
SHUNRYU SUZUKI
Better a handful of quietness
Than both hands full with toil
And much chasing the wind.
ECCLESIASTES
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is “look under foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
JOHN BURROUGHS
It is the intensity of the longing that does all the work.
KABIR
I must confess that I don’t have the faintest idea what my purpose is or what’s going on, and I never have. I became comfortable with that mystery a long time ago—that I would never know how any of these things fit together in any explicit way.
GARY SNYDER
I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among the reeds. It will be a success if I shall have left myself behind.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
1956, upon his return to England following a US tour, bandleader Ted Heath observes: “Rock ‘n’ roll is mainly performed by colored people for colored people and is therefore unlikely to prove popular in Britain”…
Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.
ITALIAN PROVERB
To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous.
CHINESE PROVERB
“What it did really is make the business a one trick pony — and everything became about the three minutes, the single, the hit single,” “I think the album died with MTV. The culture in the record companies in the last 20 years has been to reward artists for three minutes of music, not for 40 minutes of music.” entertainment attorney Michael Guido tells FRONTLINE.
—
Seeing misery in views and opinions, without adopting any, I found inner peace and freedom. One who is free does not hold to views or dispute opinions. For a sage there is no higher, lower, nor equal, no places in which the mind can stick. But those who grasp after views and opinions only wander about the world annoying people.
THE SUTTA NIPATA
Willy Ley, a former head of the FDA, said it best when he said “What the Food and Drug Administration does and what the public thinks that it does are as different as night and day”.
“Displays no trace of imagination, good taste or ingenuity… It’s a stinkeroo.”
1939 New Yorker review of the film The Wizard of Oz.
For twelve years Naropa followed the great Indian sage Tilopa. Tilopa would say, “If you fetch me soup from the kitchen, then I might teach you.” Naropa would sneak in the kitchen, suffer a terrible beating at the hands of the kitchen staff, but emerge triumphant with the cup of soup. But Tilopa would only say, “I want another cup, go and fetch it.”
This kind of incident occurred over and over and over again, until Naropa’s sense of yearning for the teachings reached a crescendo. At that moment Tilopa gave Naropa the most profound initiation into the truth—he took off his sandal and slapped Naropa in the face. Suddenly that was it; there was nothing more Naropa needed.
TIBETAN MONDO
As far as Buddha Nature is concerned, there is no difference between a sinner and a sage. . . . One enlightened thought and one is a Buddha, one foolish thought and one is again an ordinary person.
HUI-NENG
The real world is beyond our thoughts and ideas; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.
SRI NISARGADATTA
A beginning student complained to his master that the meditation practice of following the breath was boring. The Zen master unexpectedly grabbed the student and held his head under water for quite a long time while the student struggled to come up. Finally, he let the student go.
“Now how boring is your breath?” he asked.
ZEN MONDO
Do or do not, there is no try.
Yoda
Jedi master, from the
“Star Wars” series
“try is a noisy way of doing nothing.”
We are what we repeatedly do.
Aristotle (384bc-322bc)
Greek philosopher, physician
& scientist
Great Quotes on SUCCESS
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
-Abraham Lincoln
Perseverance is not a long race;
it is many short races one after another.
-Walter Elliott
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important
than any other one thing.
- Abraham Lincoln
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Greatness lies not in being strong,
but in the right use of strength.
- Henry Ward Beecher
Success is never final.
Failure is never fatal.
Courage is what counts.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
– Samuel Johnson
Do what you can,
with what you have,
where you are.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
- Francis Bacon
The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation…
The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
- Jacob Bronowski
Footprints on the sands of time are not made by sitting down.
- unknown
One never notices
what has been done;
one can only see
what remains to be done.
- Marie Currie
Any coward can fight a battle when he’s sure of winning;
but give me the man who has the pluck to fight when he’s sure of losing.
- George Eliot
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
A leader is one who
knows the way,
goes the way,
and shows the way.
- John C. Maxwell
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
– William James
Obstacles are those frightful things
you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
– Henry Ford
Equality:
After the game,
the king and the pawn
go into the same box.
– Italian Proverb
Character is like a tree
and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it;
the tree is the real thing.
– Abraham Lincoln
What would you attempt to do
if you knew you would not fail?
– Robert Schuller
We never know how far reaching
something we may think, say
or do today will affect the lives of
millions tomorrow.
- B.J. Palmer
The superior man is modest in his
speech, but exceeds in his actions.
- Confucius
What comes out of you when you are squeezed is what is inside you.
- Wayne Dyer
Empowerment is all about letting go so that others can get going.
– Kenneth Blanchard
Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
– Malcolm Forbes
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
- Barbara Johnson
Not every successful man is a good father.
But every good father is a successful man.
- R. Duvall
I talk and talk and talk, and I haven’t taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.
- Mario Cuomo
The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal.
The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.
- Benjamin Mays
According to aerodynamic laws, the bumblebee cannot fly.
Its body weight is not the right proportion to its wingspan.
Ignoring these laws, the bee flies anyway.
– M. Sainte-Lague
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
– Henry Ford
The art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry
is probably one of the secrets of our great men.
– Captain J.A. Hatfield
Success will not lower its standard to us. We must raise our standard to success.
- Rev. Randall R. McBride, Jr.
It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
– George Elliot
Talk does not cook rice.
- Chinese Proverb
Rule your mind or it will rule you.
– Horace
It is when the well is dry that we know the price of water.
– Ben Franklin
Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.
- George Halas
Attach yourself to your passion, but not to your pain.
Adversity is your best friend on the path to success.
– unknown
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation
with the bricks that others throw at him.
– Sidney Greenberg
To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd;
to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no else has seen.
– unknown
I am more afraid
of an army of 100 sheep
led by a lion
than an army of 100 lions
led by a sheep.
– Talleyrand
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
– Thomas Edison
How you spend your time
is more important than
how you spend your money.
Money mistakes can be corrected,
but time is gone forever.
– David Norris
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self.
– Aristotle
Outstanding leaders appeal to the hearts of their followers – not their minds.
– Unknown
Yesterday is a cancelled check;
Tomorrow is a promissory note;
Today is the only cash you have,
so spend it wisely.
– Kim Lyons
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.
One helps you make a living,
the other helps you make a life.
- Sandra Carey
Truth fears no trial.
– Proverb
If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.
- George B. Shaw, 1856 – 1950
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened; vision cleared; ambition inspired, and success achieved.
– Helen Keller
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living.
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
– Dale Carnegie
To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;
to earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;
to know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Genius is seldom recognized for what it is:
a great capacity for hard work.
- Henry Ford, 1863 – 1947
Reputation is what people think you are.
Character is who you really are.
Take care of your character and your reputation will take care of itself.
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
– Richard Bach
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.
- Tim Notke
Success is a journey, not a destination.
– Unknown
The middle of every successful project looks like a disaster.
– Rosabeth Moss Cantor
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
- Ronald E. Osborn
If you aren’t making any mistakes, it’s a sure sign you’re playing it too safe.
– John Maxwell
If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.
- David Ambrose
Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.
-J.C. Penny
Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?
– Frank Scully
A competitive world has two possibilities for you: you can lose or, if you want to win, you can change.
– Lester C. Thurow
I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: try to please everybody.
– Mr. Herbert Bayard Swope
The secret of success is consistency of purpose.
– Benjamin Disraeli
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
Bill Gates quotes (American Entrepreneur and Founder of Microsoft Co., b.1955)
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
“If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 MPG”
“To create a new standard it takes something that’s not just a little bit different. It takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination. And the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”
“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax”
Abraham Lincoln quotes (American 16th US President (1861-65), who brought about the emancipation of the slaves. 1809-1865)
“Tell me what you brag about and I’ll tell you what you lack”
Spanish Proverb
”Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leonardo da Vinci quotes (Italian draftsman, Painter, Sculptor, Architect and Engineer whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. 1452-1519)
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
George Bernard Shaw quotes (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)
“Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.”
Lao Tzu quotes (Chinese taoist Philosopher, b.600 BC)
“To know and not to do is not to know”
“I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.”
Kahlil Gibran quotes (Lebanese born American philosophical Essayist, Novelist and Poet. 1883-1931)
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”
Confucius quotes (China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC)
“Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.”
Mark Twain quotes (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)
“Skill to do comes of doing”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“Knowledge exists to be imparted”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero quotes (Ancient Roman Lawyer, Writer, Scholar, Orator and Statesman, 106 BC-43 BC)
“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.”
Anton Chekhov quotes (Russian playwright and master of the modern short story, 1860-1904)
“There is no knowledge that is not power”
Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes (American Poet, Lecturer and Essayist, 1803-1882)
I have always known that at last I would take this road
But yesterday I did not know
It would be today.
NARIHARA
When both body and mind are at peace, all things appear as they are: perfect, complete, lacking nothing.
DOGEN
Religion is not to go to God by forsaking the world but to find Him in it. Our faith is to believe in our essential oneness with Him. “God is in us and we in Him” must be made the most fundamental faith of all religions.
SOEN SHAKU
The human mind has absolute freedom as it’s true nature. There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained this realization. Do not doubt the possibilities because of the simplicity of this method.
DOGEN
Only within our own body, with its heart and mind, can bondage and suffering be found, and only here can we find true liberation.
THE BUDDHA
If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace. So wherever you are attached, let go of that and come back to the center. Learn to see all movement of life with balance and openness.
ACHAAN CHAH
You cannot avoid paradise. You can only avoid seeing it.
CHARLOTTE JOKO BECK
Zen is not safe. Letting go is a big risk. People are scared out of their minds to let go. To really let go of everything. To let go of everything! That’s the big one, isn’t it?
MAURINE STUART
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
HENRY MILLER
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Sir Winston Churchill
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.
Sir Winston Churchill
Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
Sir Winston Churchill
Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.
George Tooker
Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Norman Mailer (1923 – )
Drive thy business or it will drive thee.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.
David M. Ogilvy
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
Just as the sun dispels darkness, the perfect sage has conquered the false habits of mind. He does not see the mind or thought derived from the mind.
NAGARJUNA
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how men would believe and adore!
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Wealth is the number of things one can do without.
FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
Who is content with nothing possesses all things.
NICOLAS BOILEAU DESPRÉAUX
“When I say be skeptical of everything I mean it. Just because someone was elected to do a job doesn’t mean that person has any idea of what they’re doing.”- Sen. Bob Kerry
Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, ‘Certainly, I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.
Business, customers
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton
To my customer. “I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it. I may not have the time, but I’ll make it.”
Unknown
Treat every customer as if they sign your paycheck…because they do.
Unknown
Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin
When you serve the customer better, there’s always a return on your investment.
Kara Parlin
When you start viewing your customers as interruptions, you’re going to have problems.
Kate Zabriskie
Without great employees you can never have great customer service.
Richard F. Gerson
You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
Jerry Fritz
“I guess we’ll get through with them in a day.”
General George Custer at Little Bighorn
“I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor.”
George III of England
In an archery contest, when the stakes are earthenware tiles a contestant shoots with skill.
When the stakes are belt buckles he becomes hesitant, and if the stakes are pure gold he becomes nervous and confused.
There is no difference as to his skill but, because here is something he prizes, he allows outward considerations to weigh on his mind. All those who consider external things important are stupid within.
CHUANG-TZU
Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
the Tao Te Ching – Chapter 64
2. LETTING GO OF OPPOSITES.
It is the nature of the ordinary person, the person who is not yet at one with the Tao, to compare the manifestations of the natural qualities possessed by things. Such a person tries to learn of such qualities by distinguishing between their manifestations, and so learns only of their comparative manifestations.
So it is that the ordinary person might consider one thing beautiful when compared with another which he considers to be ugly; one thing skillfully made compared with another which he considers badly made. He knows of what he has as a result of knowing what he does not have, and of that which he considers easy through that which he considers difficult. He considers one thing long by comparing it with another thing which he considers short; one thing high and another low. He knows of noise through silence and of silence through noise, and learns of that which leads through that which follows.
When such comparisons are made by a sage, that is a person who is in harmony with the Tao, that person is aware of making a judgement, and that judgements are relative to the person who makes them, and to the situation in which they are made, as much as they are relative to that which is judged.
Through the experience and knowledge through which he has gained his wisdom, the sage is aware that all things change, and that a judgement which is right in one situation might easily be wrong in another situation. He is therefore aware that he who seems to lead does not always lead, and that he who seems to follow does not always follow.
Because of this awareness, the sage frequently seems neither to lead nor follow, and often seems to do nothing, for that which he does is done without guile; it is done naturally, being neither easy nor difficult, not big or small. Because he accomplishes his task and then lets go of it without seeking credit, he cannot be discredited. Thus, his teaching lasts for ever, and he is held in high esteem.
5. TRANQUIL BUT UNCEASING.
Those things which are in opposition with each other are not benevolent towards each other, and may even treat each other with contempt or malevolence.
>Although the creatures which are born of nature may be in opposition with each other, nature itself is in opposition to nothing for there is nothing for it to oppose. It acts without conscious intention, and it is therefore neither deliberately benevolent, contemptuous nor malevolent. In this respect the way of the Tao is the same as the way of nature. Therefore, even when acting in a benevolent manner, the sage does not act from any conscious desire to be benevolent.
Through his manner of breathing like a babe, he remains free of conscious desire, and so retains his tranquility. By this means he is empty of desire, and his energy is not drained from him.
Zen does not teach, it points.
D. T. SUZUKI
Busiuness
Robert Greenleaf, ATT
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.
Theodore Rubin
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
John Foster Dulles
The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
Carl Jung
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
Stephen Covey
You can buy a person’s hands but you can’t buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.
Thomas J. Watson
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964),
If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen (1953 – )
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.
Arthur Rubinstein (1886 – 1982)
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Christopher Lasch
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936)
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb’s Journal
To err is human–and to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Robert Orben
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld magazine
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.
unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)
Give no decision till both sides thou’st heard.
Phocylides
If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
Robert Fritz
Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955),
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940), “The Crack-Up” (1936)
It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
G. H. Hardy (1877 – 1947)
A mind too active is no mind at all.
Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963)
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924)
He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865)
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)
I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
John Cage (1912 – 1992)
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894)
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885), ‘Histoire d’un crime,’ 1852
If the shopper feels like it was poor service, then it was poor service. we are in the customer perception business.
Mark Perrault, Rally Stores
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.” -Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Play the music not the instrument.
Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times – Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher (1469 – 1527)
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change – Charles Darwin
Ignorance is always afraid of change – Jawaharlal Nehru, 1st prime minister of India (1889 – 1964)
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory – Dr W Edwards Deming, American management and total quality guru (1900 – 1993)
Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence, only in constant improvement and constant change – Tom Peters
When the rate of change inside an organization is slower than the rate of change outside the organization, the end is in sight – John Welsh, Chairman, General Electric
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it – Kurt Lewin
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them,
you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself” – er
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. – Robert Frost
If you want to feel rich, just count all of the things you have that money can’t buy.
Don’t confuse movement with action.
Advice is what we ask for when we don’t trust ours.
“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?
Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don’t believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart’s content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called ‘meaningless’ except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one’s everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
“Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: ‘Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.’ I should actually want my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine’s Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn’t known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir