Quotes - by Topic
Act
Where there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.
(variation: When there is hope in the future, there is power in the present.)
— John Maxwell
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
— Alexander Woollcott
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
— Edmund Burke
Action is but coarsened thought — thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
— Henri-Frederic Amiel
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
— Thomas H Huxley
A bird must move before it can fly.
Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
— Benjamin Franklin
Advice
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.
— Cicero
Advice should always be consumed between two thick slices of doubt.
— Walt Schmidt
As time passes we all get better at blazing a trail through the thicket of advice.
— Margot Bennett
Branding
- the perception others have of you
- the first 3-4 sentences they'd say about you
- be hard to forget
Care
Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
— Theodore Roosevelt
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Commitments
I've been on a calendar, but never on time.
— Marilyn Monroe
Every man has only enough strength to complete those assignments that he is fully convinced are important.”
— Johann Goethe
Confidence
Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.
— Earl Gray Stevens
They can because they think they can.
— Virgil
Contrarian
Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That's not just a catchy slogan. It's the very essence of successful investing.
— J Paul Getty
Creating
- bring what's desired into existence
"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction"
— Pablo Picasso
Customers
- need help remembering
Experts
There are as many opinions as there are experts.
— Franklin D Roosevelt
Fear
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
— Edmund Burke
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear — fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.
— Henry Mencken
If the primary aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.
— Thomas Aquinas
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
— Mark Twain
Focus
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
— Franz Kafka
The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
— Robert Shiller
Giving (Philanthrophy)
A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.
— Warren Buffett
I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.
— Warren Buffett
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
— Winston Churchill
From those to whom much is given, much is expected
— unknown
Goals
The minute you begin to do what you want to do, it’s really a different kind of life.”
— Buckminster Fuller
Proper planning prevents particularly poor performance
Desire + simplicity of clarity —> achieve your goal
Shine your mind on your goals: the object of attention grows
If your reality begins with dreams, your dreams will become your reality
Let go of the outcome and your income will increase
An average person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.
— Brian Tracy
Keep away from people that try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
— Mark Twain
For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these: It might have been!
— John Greenleaf Whittier, Maud Muller (1866)
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
— John Wooden
It is not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
— John Wooden
Habits
The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
— Somerset Maugham
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle
Happiness
Make someone happy: happy —> success, but success does not lead to happiness
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
— Carl Buechner
Health
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
— Mark Twain
Investing
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
— Warren Buffett
I think that much of the advice given to young men about saving money is wrong. I never saved a cent until I was forty years old. I invested in myself - in study, in mastering my tools, in preparation. Many a man who is putting a few dollars a week into the bank would do much better to put it into himself.
— Henry Ford
Knowledge
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
— Bertrand Russell
Learning
The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
— Muhammad Ali
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
— Pearl Buck
As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Listen well and you will benefit from those who speak poorly.
— Unknown
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
— Edmund Burke
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
— Will Durant
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
— Mark Twain
A book tightly shut is but a block of paper.
— Chinese Proverb
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
— Pablo Picasso
One repays a teacher badly if one only remains a pupil.
— Nietzsche
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
— Bobby Knight
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.
— Galileo Galilei
Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
— Albert Einstein
I will study and get ready, and maybe my chance will come.
— Abraham Lincoln
I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
— Pablo Picasso
How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course, and I forgot how to drive?
— Homer Simpson
Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.
— Jim Rohn
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
— Benjamin Franklin
The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
— William Arthur Ward
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.
— Henry Ford
Legacy
Someone should tell us at the start of our lives that we're dying. And we might live life to the limit every minute of every day. Do what I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.
— Michael Landon
Before you speak, listen.
Before you write, think.
Before you spend, earn.
Before you invest, investigate.
Before you criticize, wait.
Before you pray, forgive.
Before you quit, try.
Before you retire, save.
Before you die, give.
— William Ward
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
— Albert Einstein
Change is life. No change is eternity.
— unknown
I don't want to come to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
— Diane Ackerman
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
— [[Charles Dickens]]]
Listen
You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.
— M Scott Peck
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
— Kin Hubbard
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
— Peter Drucker
Mistakes
Do not fear mistakes — there are none.
— Miles Davis
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.
— Louisa May Alcott
Money
Rub against people with money and money may rub off on you.
Money — like good health — we're concerned about to the extent we don't have it
We're paid in proportion to market demand, our skill and the supply of talent
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
— Robert Frost
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
— Woody Allen
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
— WC Fields
Opportunity
Opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
— Thomas Edison
Perceptions
You are to yourself what you think you are.
You are to others what you do.
Persistence
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it - but all that had gone before.
— Jacob Riis
You can go far by being yourself.
— Jack Welch
Preparation
Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.
— Bobby Knight
Problems
- don't solve problems —> planning, producing what you want
- new problems replace old problems (vacuum filled)
Questions
Be like water: open, deep and clear
- ask innocent questions
Recognition
I can live two months on a good compliment.
— Mark Twain
Responsibility
This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
— Unknown
Risk
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing! Security does not exist in nature.
// — Helen Keller//
A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are for.
— John A. Shedd (Salt from My Attic)
Prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
— Samuel Johnson
Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.
— Samuel Johnson
If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
— Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I… I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
— Robert Frost
Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
— Frederick B. Wilcox
Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?
— Frank Scully
One that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
— Thomas Fuller
What you risk reveals what you value.
— Jeanette Winterson
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
— John F Kennedy
The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis'. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger — but recognize the opportunity.
— John F Kennedy
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
— Peter Drucker
What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it is another matter.
— Peter Drucker
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— Mark Twain
The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.
— Brian Tracy
The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
— Dale Carnegie
Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
— David Lloyd George
Security
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
— Henry Ford
Selling
Selling is the easiest job if you work it hard and the hardest job if you work it easy.
— Unknown
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 Ogilvy
Sharing
The road is better than the end.
— Cervantes
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
— George Eliot
When I do good, I feel good; when I don't do good, I don't feel good.
— Abraham Lincoln
If I give you a pfennig, you will be one pfennig richer and I'll be one pfennig poorer. But if I give you an idea, you will have a new idea, but I shall still have it, too.
— Albert Einstein
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
//— Edith Wharton
Simple
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated awesomely simple, that's creativity.
— Charles Mingus
It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
— William of Occam
Storytelling
- we're in an age of excessive information —> sales resistance —> storytelling
- storytelling = placebo effect
- the market demands storytelling
Success
There are only two rules of success:
1. Never tell everything you know
2.
Nothing is easy, but who wants nothing?
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
— Mark Twain
If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
— Bill Lyon
Don`t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.
— John Wooden
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life…and that is why I succeed.”
— Michael Jordan
Success leaves clues
— Tony Robbins
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Be the best at what you do and the world will beat a path to your door
— Sam Walton
Talent
Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
— Henri-Frederic Amiel
Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
— Henry Van Dyke
Team
Many hands make light work.
— John Heywood
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
— Michael Jordan
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
— Henry Ford
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
- Michael Winner
Time
There is is a myth that time is money. In fact, time is more precious than money. It's a nonrenewable resource. Once you've spent it, and if you've spent it badly, it's gone forever.
— Neil Fiore
If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
— Bruce Lee
Tombstone Inscription
- Served Greatly With Love
Trust
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
— Samuel Goldwyn
Trust one who has gone through it
— Virgil
Truth
We arrive at the truth, not by the reason only, but also by the heart.
— Blaise Pascal
People will believe what they want to believe although the truth may be presented with facts.
— Timothy Youngblood
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
— Winston Churchill
Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.
— W Clement Stone
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
— Lenin
I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
— Jules Renard
A wise man is never to sure of what he knows to be true.
— James Gray
Uncertainty
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
— Ursula LeGuin
Value
Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.
— Albert Einstein
Wealth
Ability is a poor man's wealth.
— John Wooden
Man was born to be rich, or inevitably to grow rich, through the use of his faculties.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you are not as wealthy as you like, there is something you don’t know.
— David Wood
Wealth is not in making money, but in making the man while he is making the money.
— John Wicker
Study well what the billionaire does. It may make you a millionaire.
— John Emmerling
The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and frugality.
— Benjamin Franklin
Wisdom
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
— Immanuel Kant
It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Wisdom begins in wonder.
— Socrates
Work
- do braver work, rather than working longer
Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win.
—Bobby Knight
