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Press on:
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not, nothing is more common than the unsuccessful man with talent.
Genius will not, unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan, "press on", has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
- Calvin Coolidge
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
- Seneca
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative (and creation). There is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would have never otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no person could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Adversity: The state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free from admirers then. --Samuel Johnson
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
- Alexis de Tocqueville
How do you build a best-of-breed company? In my humble opinion, it's basic stuff. You must build a firm with moral principles. If anyone in my company mistreats someone else in the firm or advances at the expense of someone else, I'll have them called in to face me and I'll fire them myself.
- H. Ross Perot,
quoted in ComputerWorld's 25th Anniversary Edition
The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment they can tolerate.
- Douglas Engelbart
Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry.
- Madison Sarratt
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Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
- Gordon R. Dickson
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
- Bertrand Russell
Life is like a clock, you can work constantly and be right all the time, or not work at all and be right at least twice a day!
"How can I teach you unless you doubt in me? It's only through doubt I can teach you."
- Yogi Master to his student
How fortunate for those in power, that people do not think.
- A. Hitler
"Think"
- Thomas Watson Sr., Founder of IBM
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When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
- Clifton Fadiman
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When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do they part.
- George Bernard Shaw
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage.
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A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.
An armed society is a polite society. -- Robert A. Heinlein
Politics looks like construction; but, like medicine, it is really only repair.
- Joseph Keith Woodard, PhD, consultant, freelance journalist
Freedom is not free.
- American World War II Veteran
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I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
- George Bernard Shaw
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You have your money and your friend,
You loan your money to your friend,
You ask your money from your friend,
You lose your money and your friend.
It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
- David Brin, "The Postman"
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow in his footsteps?
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
- Bertrand Russell
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
This is how they [the yogi masters] do it to you. If you have an ego, they tip it and topple it. They give you everything, but never the ego.
- Prince Hirinda Singh, Teacher
I never really knew my goal until about five years ago, when I realized the difference between developing a vision and a goal. A vision should be something that is impossible to achieve. It should inspire you. If you have a goal, you are trapped within the goal itself; but if you have an impossible vision, you enjoy every moment because there is inspiration involved. So now my goal is impossible: to change the consciousness of the world from 'I' and 'mine' to 'we' and 'us'. I know I cannot succeed, but my vision is so vast that it inspires me, and I'm enjoying every moment making the effort.
- Prince Hirinda Singh, Teacher
Religion should teach man to live for universal progress that all men should benefit equally, for without the co-ordination and equality of all, the individual's chance for spiritual advancement is very limited. Thus as a student of spiritual philosophy, your interest should always be universal, even in your motive for searching for wisdom; it should be with the express desire to use the wisdom you gain for the benefit of your fellow man in service to the Christ Principle.
- Mr. Alfred J. Parker (1897-1964), Founder, Kabalarian Philosophy
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Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into a giant oak. Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
One farmer says to me, 'You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;' and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind.
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
"What's the difference between a conservative and a liberal? Well, if you're drowning 50 feet offshore, a conservative will throw you a 25 foot rope, hold on, and tell you to swim for it. A liberal will throw you a 100 foot rope, then rush off to do more good works.
If at first you don't succeed, your skydiving days are over...
Why is it you never see the headline: "PSYCHIC WINS LOTTERY" ?
An MIT student spent an entire summer going to the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes, throwing birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home football team, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get off of the field. The guy wrote his thesis on this, and graduated.
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130 more quotes on Love,
the greatest power in the universe
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Gates has clearly won...and free-wheeling innovation in the software industry has ground to a halt.
- Mitch Kapor, "Business Month", Nov. 1990
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The emphasis on easy-to-learn and natural can be very dangerous. [It's like] saying, "Here are two systems: one of them you can learn to use very quickly, but the other one is very difficult and unnatural." Then I show a picture of a tricycle and a bicycle and say, "How come we ever got past the tricycle stage?"
- Douglas Engelbart
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of mag tapes.
Technologists should run software companies. All the key Japanese companies that are gaining share are run by engineers or technologists: Honda, Sony, NEC, etc. That must say something.
- Philippe Kahn, CEO of Borland, Inc.
quoted in ComputerWorld's 25th Anniversary Edition
Newspapers: Dead trees with information smeared on them.
- from Horizon's "Electronic Frontier" episode
INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY: Interactive Network For Organizing, Retrieving, Manipulating, Accessing, and Transferring Information On National Systems, Unleashing Practically Every Rebellious Human Intelligence, Gratifying Hackers, Wiseacres, And Yahoos.
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I think we're born, life is brief and in a flash we're dead.
- Steve Jobs
quote in ComputerWorld's 25th Anniversary Edition
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Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
- unknown
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This page last modified: April 11, 1998
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