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

Reflection, Inspiration, Soccer

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
~ Peter Drucker

It's not how much you have that makes people look up to you, it's who you are.
~ Elvis Presley

If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us arms.
~ Mike Ditka

Wisdom, Practice, Deeds

Patience is the companion of wisdom.
~ Anonymous

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning .... They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play.
~ Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

For Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
~ William Shakespeare

Enthusiasm, Compassion, Truth

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
~ Charles Kingsley (British Anglican Clergyman, Teacher and Writer whose novels influenced social developments in Britain. 1819-1875)

Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.
~ Dalai Lama

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
~ Oscar Wilde

Work, Drills, Excuses

Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice and need.
~ François Marie Arouet Voltaire

School is a drill for the battle of life. If you fail in the drill you will fail in the battle.
~ Karl G. Maeser

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
~ Dr. George Washington Carver

Success, Exploration, Choice

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do.
~ Thomas Edison

Close observation of children at play suggests that they find out about the world in the same way as scientists find out about new phenomena and test new ideas. Young children may not be able to verbalize new ideas forming in their heads, but they may still apply similar processes to scientists.  During this exploration, all the senses are used to observe and draw conclusions about objects and events through simple, if crude, scientific investigations.
~ Judith Roden, Lecturer, Canterbury Christ Church University College

You have freedom of choice, but not freedom from choice.
~ Wendell Jones

Undervalued, Resistance, Found

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
~ Malcolm Forbes

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.
~ Thomas Jefferson

The easiest thing to find is fault.
~ Anonymous

Envy, Problems, Success

Envy is an insult to oneself.
~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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

Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.
~ Maya Angelou

Rebellious patriots, Tradition, Invention

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.
~ Barbara Ehrenreich

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.
~ Winston S. Churchill

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.
~ Roger von Oech, President, Creative Think

Enemies, Others, Fun

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
~ African Proverb

Those who spend their time worrying about what people think of them wouldn't worry if they knew how rarely other people think of them.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

The activities that are the easiest, cheapest, and most fun to do--such as singing, playing games, reading, storytelling, and just talking and listening-are also the best for child development.
~ Professor Jerome Singer, Yale University
(...no matter how old you are ~k)