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