Listen, the Future, Fruitful Errors

Spend more time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.
~ Advice

The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.
~ William Gibson

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
~ Issac Asimov

Fuel, Founders, and Focus

Make time to practice meditation, and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
~ Advice

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
~ P. J. O'Rourke

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
~ Oscar Wilde

Enrichment, Leadership and Perfection

Play more games and read more books than you did last year.
~ Advice

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless ... someone's got to make a wake up call.
~ Warren Bennis

It is better to aim at perfection and miss, than to aim at imperfection and hit it.
~ Thomas J. Watson

Enthusiasm, Creativity, Inspiration

Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
~ Advice

Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.
~ John Updike (1932-2009)

You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
~ Jack London

On the right track, nonconformist

When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, "My purpose is to ___________ today."
~ Advice


Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
~ Will Rogers

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
~ James Thurber

Civilized? Not-normal? These are for you!

Buy a DVR. Tape your late night shows and get more sleep.
~ Advice

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
~ Frank Zappa

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
~ Robert E. Howard

Range of Influence

Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Buy a lock if you have to. 
~ Advice

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
~ Edward R. Murrow

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
~ Douglas Adams

Audacity, diversification and smiling...

Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
~ Advice

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
~ Warren Buffett

With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Effective Thinking

Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.
~ Walter Chrysler(1875-1940)

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.
~ Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.
~ Richard Gere

Success... and relaxation

Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.
~ Denis Waitley (American motivational speaker)

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?
~ Ralph Marston

There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to
admit one's errors. It not only clears up the air of guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem created by the error.
~ Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)

and relating to playing...

What if this weren't a hypothetical question?

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

~ George Bernard Shaw quotes (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don't over-analyse your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.

~ Leo F. Buscaglia quotes (American guru, tireless advocate of the power of love, 1924-1998)

Just playing

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
~ Kin Hubbard.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
~ Hubert Humphrey

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
~ Carl Gustav Jung

Guard your time and your thoughts

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

~ Carl Sandburg

It's hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.

~ quotes about Confidence by Sally Kempton, Esquire, 1970 Personal Growth and Self Development
(the moral is don't give space in your head to your enemies - K)

Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

~ Unknown

Heroes, Attitudes, and Vision

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
~ Benjamin Disraeli

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
~ Herm Albright

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.
~ Benjamin Franklin

law, reputation and optimism

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
~ Martin Luther King Jr.

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
~ Henry Ford

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.
~ Robert Brault

Future; being good; creativity

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
~ William Gibson

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
~ George Orwell

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.
~ Ray Bradbury

Peace, and purpose

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
~Albert Einstein

If you're not serving a customer, you better be serving someone who is.
~ Unknown

Great teams need great leaders - leaders who inspire, motivate, instil pride, loyalty and a sense of fun at work.
~Natalie Calvert, Managing Director, Calcom Group

Encouragement, criticism, or wit?

The words in your mouth can be the best reward for your people.
~ Barry Lawson, of Scottish Water

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
~ Franklin P. Jones

The problem lies between the keyboard and the chair.
~ Noted by a Computer Help Line Adviser in a call report

Problems and opportunity

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
~ Thomas Edison

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
~ Theodore Rubin

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
~ Scott Adams

Friendship - the muse of inspiration

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
~ Henry David Thoreau (American Essayist, Poet and Philosopher,1817-1862)

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
~ Lord Chesterfield (British Statesman, Diplomat and Wit, 1694-1773)

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
~ Western Union internal memo 1876

Prejudice and Speech

Even the hint of prejudice of any type has no place in a well-run organization.
~ Fred A. Manske, Jr.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
~ Sir William Osler

Press On

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
~ Al Franken

We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try.
~ Tom Clancy

Some men see things as they are and say "Why?" I dream things that never were, and say, "Why not?"
~ George Bernard Shaw

Positivity...

Love your enemies. It makes them so damn mad!
~ Mark Twain

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
~ George F. Will

Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it none exists - with it all things are possible.
~ Ida M. Tarbell (1857 -1944)

The Important Thing

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
~ Stephen King

The important thing is not to stop questioning.
~ Albert Einstein

The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little.
~ Joe Martin

Help others

Computers now allow us to lose more information faster than we've ever been able to before.
~ Paul Prichard

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~ Richard Feynman

Help others get ahead. You will always stand taller with someone else on your shoulders.
~ Bob Moawad

Press on!

If you delay till tomorrow what ought to be done today, you overcharge the morrow with a burden which belongs not to it.
~ Hugh Blair

The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.
~ King Edward VIII

Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
~ Stephen Covey

Looking where? For what?

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
~ J.F. Kennedy

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
~ Groucho Marx

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
~ Isaac Asimov

Generations, character and science

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
~ George Orwell

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny..."
~ Isaac Asimov

Each moment fits into eternity

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
~ P. J. O'Rourke

Never explain -- our friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.
~ Elbert Hubbard

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
~ R. W. Emerson

Truth and Influence

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.
~ Chuck Reid

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

Power lasts 10 years; influence not more than a hundred.
~ Korean proverb

Mixed bag of thoughts

People demand freedom of speech to make up for freedom of thought, which they avoid.
~Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

A 2-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.
~ Jerry Seinfeld

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Life's Challenges

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
~ Seneca

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
~ Carl Sandburg

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
~ George Eliot

testing for color schemes

Having once had it perfect, I'm now on a fool's errand to recapture that.

Great things begin in small ways

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended for us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

The energy produced by breaking down the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is taking moonshine.
~ Ernest Rutherford

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification.
~ William Shockley

One of Us

Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.
~ M. Twain

Bronze is the mirror of the form; wine, of the heart.
~ Aeschylus

For those who want some proof that physicists are human, the proof is in the idiocy of all the different units which they use for measuring energy.
~ Richard Feynman

Is trivia reality?

Plans are useless, planning is essential.
~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.
~ Robert Heinlein

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
~ Philip K. Dick

Springtime

Dancing is a wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
~ Christopher Morley (American writer and editor 1890-1957)

Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.
~ Doug Larson

A little madness in the spring is wholesome even for a king.
~ Emily Dickinson

Seekers

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
~ Albert Einstein

Good for the body is the work of the body, and good for the soul is the work of the soul, and good for either is the work of the other.
~ Henry David Thoreau

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
~ George Moore

Politics, understanding and... evolution?

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.
~ Ronald Reagan

Understanding is a three-edged sword : your side, my side, and the truth in between.
~ Ambassador Kosh, "Babylon 5"

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Character

It's not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game ever starts.
~ Addison Walker

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
~ Sam Ewig

Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.
~ Vince Lombardi

Science, Reading and Knowledge

"Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth."

~ Jules Verne

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."

~ John Locke

"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know."

~ Mark Twain

Fun Ones

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.

~ Doug Larson

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

~ Mark Twain

Wisdom and foolishness

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

~ Winston Churchill

"We are always ready~even eager~to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it."

~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Education and Growth

"Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much part of the process as the experiments that work."

~ C. Carter-Scott

 

"The entire object of true education, is to make people not merely do the right thing, but to enjoy right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge."

~ John Ruskin

 

"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't."

~ Henry Ward Beecher

 

Be More

"Great thoughts come from the heart."

~ François de La Rochefoucauld

 

"True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information."

~ Winston Churchill

 

 

Your actions build your future

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

~ R. D. Laing

The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.

~ Leonard I. Sweet

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Don't worry

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

~ Albert Einstein

A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.

~ Emo Philips

Laugh

I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.

~ Bob Hope quotes (English born American Actor and Comedian, 1903-2003)

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.

~ Jimmy Buffett