Life, Leadership, Identity

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
~ Samuel Butler, the younger

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation.
~ Warren Bennis

You are not what you own.
~ Fugazi, American rock band

Daring, Play, Stand

All serious daring starts from within.
~ Eudora Welty

For the main characteristic of play - whether of child or adult - is not its content but its mode. Play is an approach to action, not a form of activity.
~ Jerome Bruner, psychologist, professor

A man who can bow before God can stand before giants.
~ Unknown

Play, Probability, Free Market

Play is work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
~ Evan Esar, humorist

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
~ James Thurber

If you destroy a free market, you create a black market.
~ Sir Winston Churchill

Fresh start, Security, Anger

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down.
~ Mary Pickford

There is no safety in hiding.
~ Ted Kennedy

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Dictators, Determination, Toughness

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
~ Winston Churchill

If you really want to do something, you will find a way. If you don't, you will find an excuse.
~ Anonymous

Tough times never last, but tough people do.
~ Robert H. Schuller

Education, Someone else, Leader

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.
~ Kurt Cobain

Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them!
~ Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

Well said, Risk, Ideas

Well done is better than well said.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
~ e e cummings

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
~ Goethe

Struggles, Minds, Creativity

D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

Great mind discuss ideas; Average minds, events; Small minds, people.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Quitting, Disorder, Play

Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.
~ Lance Armstrong

There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method.
~ Herman Melville

It is a happy talent to know how to play.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher, poet, essayist

Value, Progress, Success

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
~ Albert Einstein

Progress is like miners’ work: it doesn’t advance as quickly as one should like, [or] as others expect.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

Failure is success if you learn from it.
~ Malcolm Forbes

Invention, Planning, Life

Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
~ Willy Wonka

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
~ Dwight Eisenhower

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
~ William James

Endure, Dare, Friend

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
~ Soren Kierkegaard

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.
~ Aristotle

On the edge, Great things, Wisdom

If you aren't living on the edge, then you are taking up too much space.
~ Flo Kennedy

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
~ Vincent Van Gogh

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
~ William James

Results, Strangers, Adventure

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
~ Thomas A. Edison

If you came and you found a strange man ... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it.
~ Professor Jerome Singer, Yale University

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
~ G.K. Chesterton

Tainted, Couples, Freedom

That's right. 'Tain't yours, and 'tain't mine.
~ Mark Twain (when friend said that a certain rich man's money was "tainted")

The happiest couples are those who spell "us" with a capital "you."
~ Klare Provine

False freedom leaves a man free to do what he likes; true freedom, to do what he ought.
~ Anonymous