Attributed to Dr. Robert Schuller
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
"Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.”
Erma Bombeck
"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
Marcel Proust
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
Abraham Lincoln
"Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 1993
Groucho Marx
"Please forgive me for not writing sooner. I've been so busy not writing to other people that I couldn't get around to not writing you in time."
E. E. Cummings
"To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”
Steve Jobs, Playboy, February 1, 1985
“It takes these very simple-minded instructions—‘Go fetch a number, add it to this number, put the result there, perceive if it’s greater than this other number’––but execute them at a rate of, let’s say, 1,000,000 per second. At 1,000,000 per second, the results appear to be magic.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
John Lennon
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy.' They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life."
Polybius
"Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories."
Will Rogers 1879-1935
“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.”
Robert A. Heinlein
“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”
H. Jackson Brown
"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), U.S. politician
"If it weren’t for lawyers, we wouldn’t need them”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
Woody Allen
“Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.”
Isaac Asimov
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be . . .”
Alexander Graham Bell
"When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us."
David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922
“Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.”
Eric Ken Shinseki, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, quoted in the National Review Online (Owens, "Marines Turned Soldiers," 12/10/2001)
“If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
Steve Jobs
"Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the fear that you have something to lose."
U.S. President Barack Obama, Presidential Inaugural Address - January 20, 2009
"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers."
Voltaire
Happy Valentine's Day!
“Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination."
Harry S. Truman
"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.“
Louis D. Brandeis (1865-1941), United States Supreme Court Justice
"Sunshine is the best disinfectant."
Party slogan, Big Brother, Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes titled "1984"), by George Orwell
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
Peter Drucker
“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”
Woodrow Wilson, (1856-1924), 28th President of the United States
“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”
Dean Stanley Teele, Harvard Business School
“The art of management is the art of making meaningful generalizations out of inadequate facts.”
Howard Hathaway Aiken (1900-1973), computing pioneer and original conceptual designer behind IBM's Harvard Mark I computer
“Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.”
Louis D. Brandeis
“Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”
Ernest Shackleton
“I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.”
Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789
“It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Confucious (551-479 BC)
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the most bitter.”
Henry Ford
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
Alvin Toffler
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Jean-Baptist Colbert, 17th Century French Minister of Finance
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the smallest amount of possible hissing.”
Will Rogers
“Income taxes have made more liars out of the American people than golf.”
[Happy U.S. Income Tax Filing Day – April 15]
John Kenneth Galbraith
“Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.”
Albert Einstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 29, 1934
“There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
Sigmund Freud
“The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.”
Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian novelist and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature)
"You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions."
Francis Vincent Frank Zappa Jr.
"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say that there is more stupidity than hydrogen and that is the basic building block of the universe."
George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
Mahatma Gandhi
“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
Alvin Toffler
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
Arthur C. Clarke, Referred to as Clarke's Third Law, his most widely published and best know 'law,' published in a 1973 revision of his compendium of essays, Profiles of the Future.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce (1881 - 1911)
Litigant, noun, a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
Margaret Thatcher
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money."
Abraham Lincoln, 1864
“It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Samuel Goldwyn
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."
W. Somerset Maugham
"It is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."
Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Well done is better than well said."
Woody Allen
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle
"The privacy you're concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.“
George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill
George Bernard Shaw sent a note to Winston Churchill saying "I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend... if you have one."
To which Sir Winston replied "Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."
E. B. White
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
James Bovard, "Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty" (1994)
"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932
“If the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all of American industry controlled by a dozen corporations and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.”
Margaret Mead (1901-1978)
“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
“Is there anything worse than being blind? Yes, a man with sight and no vision.”
Mark Twain [Samuel L. Clemens]
“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Wish I'd Said That (NOT!)
“The worst of the impact on the financial-services industry is behind us.” Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, April 15, 2008, after the Annual Meeting.
Clarence Darrow
“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population."
John Adams (1735-1826)
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
"Peanuts," Charles Schulz
“Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”
Michael Jordan
“Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t’ turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”
Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister)
“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
Robert Jackson (U.S. Attorney General, 1940; later, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)
“Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.”
