Thoughts to Live By

"There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.": Soren Kierkegaard

"Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision for yourself because you can never really live anyone else's life, not even your own child's. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.": Eleanor Roosevelt

"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

"It's nice to be the best, but not when being the best brings out the worst in you.": Rodney Dangerfield

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.": Teddy Roosevelt

" Confess yourself to heaven;
Repent what's past; avoid what is to come.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this.

Refrain to-night,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature.": Shakespeare - Hamlet

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.": Eleanor Roosevelt

Boy Scout Oath: On my honor I will do my best: To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
Boy Scout Law: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
Boy Scout Motto: Be prepared.

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.": George Bernard Shaw

"It's your attitude, not just your aptitude, that determines your ultimate altitude.": Zig Ziglar

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.": Winston S. Chruchill

"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.": George Washington Carver

"Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves - to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.": Stewart B. Johnson

"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.": Theodore Roosevelt

"God loves us the way we are but He loves us too much to leave us that way.": Leighton Ford

"Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.": Woodrow Wilson

"Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.": Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.": Seneca

"There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.": T. E. Lawrence

"We learn from failure much more than from success; we often discover what we will do by finding our what we will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.": Samuel Smiles

"Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater one. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.": William Hazlitt

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.": Booker T. Washington

"Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait...The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count.": Dr. Robert Anthony

"There are two ways of exerting one's strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.": Booker T. Washington

"The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.": Thomas Paine

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.": George Washington

"No man needs sympathy because he has to work. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.": Theodore Roosevelt

"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

"The purpose of higher education is to make men aware of what was and what is; to incite them to probe into what may be. It seeks to teach them to understand, to evaluate, to communicate.": Otto Kleppner

"The theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.": The Communist Manifesto

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.": Winston Churchill

"The media of communications on which people most depend for facts and information - the press, the movies, radio and television - have been used to reduce the people to conformity and dumb acquiescence. The press, movies, radio and television bear a large share of the reponsibility for the climate of fear and hysteria which has envoloped our country and has become such a threat to our freedom.": William T. Evjue (editorial in the Caplital Times, Madison, Wisconsin)

"There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead, and even less to the ability to lead somewhere that will be to the advantage of the led... Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able, and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner toments than by any demand for their guidance.": Bergen Evans

"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.": Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.": Robert F. Kennedy

"If you play it safe in life, you've decided that you don't want to grow anymore.": Shirley Hufstedler