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