QUOTATIONS
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."
Sir Winston Churchill
AMBITION
"Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see a bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses."
Dale Carnegie
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well."
William Shakespeare, King Lear
ANGER
"Beware the fury of a patient man."
John Dryden
"A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat; self-control is the
rule."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
ART
"Artists can colour the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must colour things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid."
Jules Feiffer
"The aim of art, the aim of a life, can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it."
Albert Camus
BEAUTY
"If I were two-faced, do you think I'd be wearing this one?"
Abraham Lincoln
"I will beat thee into handsomeness!"
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
COMMITMENT
"Bear in mind, if you are going to amount to anything, that your success does not depend upon the brilliancy and the impetuosity with which you take hold, but upon the ever lasting and sanctified bulldoggedness with which you hang on after you have taken hold."
Dr. A. B. Meldrum
"The miracle, or the power, that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance under the prompting of a brave, determined spirit."
Mark Twain
"If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, "Here comes number seventy-one!"
Richard M. DeVos
"Never mistake motion for action."
Ernest Hemingway
"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No
problem
of human destiny is beyond human beings."
John F. Kennedy
"Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology
for
every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny."
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
"Every man without passions has within him no principle of action,
nor motive to act."
Claude A. Helvetius
"One essential to success is that your desire be an all-obsessing
one, your thoughts and aims be co-ordinated, and your energy be
concentrated and
applied without let-up."
Claude M. Bristol
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country
demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is common sense to take a
method and
try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all,
try
something."
Theodore Roosevelt
"First and foremost, your ability to achieve success at a targeted,
pre-determined
goal will be a direct function of the degree of consistent intensity
which
drives the momentum of your efforts."
Pete Johnson
"Nor is it always in the most distinguished achievements that men's virtues or vices may be best discovered: but very often an action of small note, a short saying, or a jest, shall distinguish a person's real character more than the greatest sieges, or the most important battle."
Plutarch
"As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs."
Henry David Thoreau
"Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs: the
chicken was involved; the pig was committed."
Unknown.
"It is no use saying: 'We are doing our best.' You have got to
succeed in doing what is necessary."
Winston Churchill
COMPUTERS
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Bill Gates (allegedly), 1981
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Charles H. Duell, U.S. Patents Office, 1899
DOUBT
"We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt
increases."
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"He is able who thinks he is able."
Buddha
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
Ralph Waldo Emerson"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could actually have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again. Because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt
EXCELLENCE
"People who have accomplished work worthwhile have had a very high sense of the way to do things. They have not been content with mediocrity. They have not confined themselves to the beaten tracks; they have never been satisfied to do things just as others do them, but always a little better. They always pushed things that came to their hands a little higher up, this little farther on, that counts in the quality of life's work. It is constant effort to be first-class in everything one attempts that conquers the heights of excellence."
Orison Swett Marden
FAITH
"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind-folded faith."
Thomas Jefferson
FAME
"What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you
yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little."
Stanislaus
"An outward honour for an inner toil."
William Shakespeare, Richard III
FEAR
"The only thing to fear is fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
FOOLS
"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do."
Benjamin Franklin
"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the
lightning ain't distributed right."
Mark Twain
"Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led
them
back to that stalemate, only because our retaliatory power, our
seconds, or
strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive
they...they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off."
US President Ronald Reagan, elucidating on the MX missile
"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm
not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate
because he unconsciously translates what he hears into
something he can understand."
Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
"He has not so much brains, as ear wax."
William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida
GENIUS
"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent
perspiration."
Thomas Edison
"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in
the
shade."
Benjamin Franklin
"The definition of genius is that it acts unconsciously; and those who have produced immortal works, have done so without knowing how or why. The greatest power operates unseen."
William Hazlitt
GREATNESS
"Some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have
greatness thrust upon them."
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
Charles de Gaulle
"The superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his
actions."
Confucius
"The worst thing to do with success, is to boast about it."
Oscar Wilde
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to
achieve immortality through not dying."
Woody Allen
"The light of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches
us. So
it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with
the
radiations of their personalities."
Kahlil Gibran
"There would be no great men if there were no little ones."
George Herbert
"The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be
criticized,
vilified, and misunderstood. That is part of the penalty for greatness,
and
every great man understands it, and understands too, that it is no
proof
of greatness."
Elbert Hubbard
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
mediocre minds."
Albert Einstein
"What great ones do, the less will prattle of."
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
HATE
"When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil."
Dale Carnegie
HUMILITY
"It is no great thing to be humble when you are brought low; but to
be
humble when you are praised is a great and rare attainment."
St. Bernard
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't
know."
Mark Twain
"Wilt thou whip thine own faults in other men?"
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
INTEGRITY
"To thine own self be true"
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you
think is
right and stick to it."
George Eliot
"Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice."
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"An honest tale speeds best being plainly told."
William Shakespeare, Richard III
LIES
"A lie is half way around the world while the truth is still pulling
its
boots on."
Lord Healey
LIFE
"Life's hard, then you die."
Woody Allen
"Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy."
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
"Sensitivity isn't being wimpy. It's about being so painfully aware
that
a flea landing on a dog is like a sonic boom."
Jeff Buckley
"Talkers are no good doers."
William Shakespeare, Henry VI
"Neither a borrower, nor a lender be"
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
"There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in
your philosophy"
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
MODESTY
"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants."
Sir Isaac Newton
"The work of art is already within the block of marble. I just chop
off
whatever isn't needed."
Rodin
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
Michelangelo
MUSIC
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Decca Recording Company, rejecting The Beatles, 1962
"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."
Elvis Presley
"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."
Rossini
POWER
"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Lord Acton
"Though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me"
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
PREPARATION
"For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe
the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost,
being overtaken and slain by the enemy. All for the want of care about
a horseshoe nail."
Benjamin Franklin
REVENGE
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
John F. Kennedy
SELF-ESTEEM
"Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others."
Buddha
"He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles
of
his own."
Aesop
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserves
your
love and affection."
Buddha
"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 little 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 the meaning of success."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
...LAST WORDS
"All my possessions for a moment of time."
Queen Elizabeth I
"I don't feel good."
Luther Burbank
"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional
thing to happen to him."
John Barrymore's dying words (US actor)
"Drink to me."
Pablo Picasso
"Ask her to wait a moment. I am almost done."
Carl Friedrich Gauss, on being informed that his wife was dying
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
Pancho Villa
"Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
George Saunders
"All this buttoning and unbuttoning."
18th. Century suicide note
"Don't unplug it, it'll only take a moment to fix."
"Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there."
"What happens if you touch these two wires togeth..."
"We won't need reservations."
"It's always sunny there this time of the year."
"Don't worry, it's not loaded."
"They'd never be stupid enough to make him a manager."
