My Favorite Quotes
Some of my favorite quotes
Don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can do.
John Wooden
You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Christopher Columbus
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
J.K. Rowling
If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery, and today? Today is a gift. That is why we call it the present.
B. Olatunji
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live, now.
Joan Baez
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein
If you want to be happy, be.
Leo Tolstoy
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain
We must be the change we wish to see.
Gandhi
The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.
Ulysses S Grant
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
Elizabeth Bibesco
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
MLK Jr
Begin doing what you want to do now. we are not living in an eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in out hand - and melting like a snowflake.
MB Ray
I shall pass through this life but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it. For I shall never pass this way again.
Etienne de Grellet
This above all: to your own self be true.
Shakespeare
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best day and night to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
EE Cummings
In three words I can sum up what I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost
Imagine.
John Lennon
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.
EE Cummings
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
EE Cummings
Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.
EE Cummings
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
EE Cummings
Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.
EE Cummings
The earth laughs in flowers.
EE Cummings
To destroy is always the first step in any creation.
EE Cummings
To like an individual because he's black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn't white.
EE Cummings
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Alfred North Whitehead
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert Einstein
The main fuel to speed the world's progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brake is our lack of imagination.
Julian Simon
The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for them everything is possible.
Alexander Chase
An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
Charles F Kettering
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep directly open to and aware of the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
Martha Graham
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Benjamin Franklin
Anything that won't sell, I don't' want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
Thomas Edison
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
Charles F Kettering
My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.
Tesla
Scientists investigate that which already is; engineers create that which has never been.
Albert Einstein
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
Scott Adams
Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.
James A Michener
The engineer has been, and is, a maker of history.
James Kip Finch
The engineer's first problem in any design situation is to discover what the problem really is.
Anonymous
Strive for perfection in everything you do. Take the best that exists and make it better. When it does not exist, design it.
Henry Royce
Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the act of the organized forcing of technological change. Engineers operate at the interface between science and society.
Dean Gordon Brown
Engineering is the art of organizing and directing men and controlling the forces and materials of nature for the benefit of the human race.
Henry G Stott
Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high privilege.
Herbert Hoover
The ideal engineer is a composite.. he is not a scientist, he is not a mathematician, he is not a sociologist or a writer, but he may use the knowledge and techniques of any or all of these discipline in solving engineering problems.
NW Dougherty
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the graves like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot deny he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned.
Herbert Hoover
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
notebooks of Lazarus Long
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
Dorothy Day
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Key
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas Edison
The man with a new idea is a crank - until the idea succeeds.
Mark Twain
For an idea that does not at first seem insane, there is no hope.
Albert Einstein
Opportunities are seldom labeled as such.
John Shed
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin
If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Samuel Johnson
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Samuel Johnson
Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
David Starr Jordan
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
Immanuel Kant
To use fear as the friend it is, we must retrain and reprogram ourselves. We must persistently and convincingly tell ourselves that the fear is here, with its gift of energy and heightened awareness, so we can do our best and learn the most in the new situation.
Peter McWilliams
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
Dr. David M. Burns
No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund Burke
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.
Eric Hoffer
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
Eric Hoffer
In life we don't get what we want, we get in life what we are. If we want more we have to be able to be more, in order to be more you have to face rejection.
Farrah Gray
I've grown certain that the root of all fear is that we've been forced to deny who we are.
Frances Moore Lappe
Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.
George Sewell
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
Jean Paul Richter
Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.
Michael Pritchard
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Susan Jeffers
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Oscar Levant
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.
Samuel Butler
There is not great genius without some touch of madness.
Seneca
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
William Hazlitt
The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Be still when you have nothing to say, when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
DH Lawrence
Waste no more time talking about great souls and how they should be. Become one yourself!
Marcus Aurelius
When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into passion, that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us.
Margery Allingham
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.
Oprah Winfrey
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Rebecca West
Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.
Robert Sternberg
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde
Put more trust in nobility of character than in an oath.
Solon
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
Edith Sitwell
The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
Herbert Agar
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.
Scott Westerfeld
How often have I said to you have when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
We did not change as we grew older, we just became more clearly ourselves.
Lynn Hall
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
Aristotle
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Aristotle
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.
David McCullough
Getting fired is nature's way to telling you have you had the wrong job in the first place.
Hal Lancaster
Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
Do no hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Henry J Kaiser
People forget how fast you did a job, but they remember how well you did it.
Howard Newton
Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
Johnny Carson
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
Robert Benchley
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of education derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On' ha solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.
Tobias Wolf
Stubbornness is also determination. It's simply a matter of shifting from ‘won't power' to ‘will power'
Peter McWilliams
The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
Cecil B DeMille
To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.
Michael Hanson
Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
Baltasar Gracian
Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits"
Paul Graham
Nerds don't' just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.
Paul Graham
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, it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
Thomas H Huxley
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
Blaise Pascal
When love is in excess it brings a man no honor nor worthiness.
Euripides
We can only learn to love by loving.
Iris Murdoch
I pay very little regard to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
Jane Austen
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
John Barrymore
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her, but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
W. Somerset Maugham
Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back.
Arthur Rubinstein
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment.
Barbara deAngelis
The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want
Ben Stein
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious
Brendan Gill
The purpose of life is to fight maturity
Dick Werthimer
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give
Sir Winston Churchill
The unexamined life is not worth living
Socrates
Think: DICEE
Deep. A great product is deep. It doesn't run out of features and functionality after a few weeks of use. Its creators have anticipated what you'll need once you come up to speed. As your demands get more sophisticated, you discover that you don't need a different product.
Indulgent. A great product is a luxury. It makes you feel special when you buy it. It's not the least common denominator, cheapest solution in sight. It's not necessarily flashy in a Ferrari kind of way, but deep down inside you know you've rewarded yourself when you buy a great product.
Complete. A great product is more than a physical thing. Documentation counts. Customer service counts. Tech support counts. Consultants, OEMS, third-party developers, and VARS count. Blogs about it counts. A great product has a great total user experience-sometimes despite the company that produces it.
Elegant. A great product has an elegant user interface. Things work the way you'd think they would. A great product doesn't fight you-it enhances you. (For all of Microsoft's great success this is why it's hard to name a Microsoft product that you'd call "great.") I could make the point that if you want to see if a company's products are elegant, you need only look at its chairman's presentations.
Emotive. A great product incites you to action. It is so deep, indulgent, complete, and elegant that it compels you to tell other people about it. You're not necessarily an employee or shareholder of the company that produces it. You're bringing the good news to help others, not yourself.
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"EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, Nov. 2I, 1864. " To MRS. BIXBY, BOSTON, MASS.
"Dear Madam-I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
"I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which shall attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
"I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
"Yours very sincerely and respectfully, A. LINCOLN."
"The value of decisions depends upon the courage required to make them" - THINK AND GROW RICH, Napoleon Hill
"Whosoever delights in solitude is a wild beast or a god" - Sir Francis Bacon
"The meaning of life is meaning" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"Human beings are the only creatures who are allowed to fail. If an ant fails, it's dead. But we're allowed to learn from our mistakes and from our failures. And that's how I learn, by falling flat on my face and picking myself up and starting all over again. If I'm not free to fail, I will never start another book, I'll never start a new thing" - L'Engle
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact, everything we see is a perspective, not the truth" - Marcus Aurelius
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