Perspective

Can there be anything worse than blindness? Oh yes...for the most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

- Helen Keller

Understanding

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him.

- Erich Fromm

The source of greatness

Buried deep within each of us is a spark of greatness, a spark than can be fanned into flames of passion and achievement. That spark is not outside of you it is born deep within you.

- James A. Ray

Engagement

A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely...but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Search for Truth

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

- Rene Descartes

Decisions

It isn't really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up. It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live.

- Golda Meir (1898-1978) Israeli Prime Minister

In Whose Image?

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

- Voltaire

Paradox

The greater the happiness, the greater could be the sadness. The more exciting the achievement, the more devastating could be the failure. These are the chances we take when we reach for something worthwhile.

- Freddie Mitman

Changing History

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

- Robert F. Kennedy

The next step

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.

- Erica Jong

Progress

Progress, however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.

- Samuel Smiles

Trivia

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

What is Valued

What people get admired and appreciated for in community are their soft skills: their sense of humour and timing, their ability to listen, their courage and honesty, their capacity for empathy.

- M. Scott Peck

Perspective

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

- Phillips Brooks

Understanding

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

- Vincent Van Gogh

Value

No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning.

- Barbara De Angelis

Influence

One life stamps and influences another, which in turn stamps and influences another, on and on until the soul of human experience breathes on in generations we'll never even meet.

- Mary Kay Blakely

Doubting Oneself

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

- Alexandre Dumas

Understanding

There are some things you don't have to know how it works - only that it works. While some people are studying the roots, others are picking the fruit. It just depends on which end of this you want to get in on.

- Jim Rohn

Which side of the Ledger?

The Bible gives us a list of human stories on both sides of the ledger. One list of human stories is used as examples - do what these people did. Another list of human stories is used as warnings - don't do what these people did. So if your story ever gets in one of these books, make sure they use it as an example, not a warning.

- Jim Rohn

Perspective

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

- Maurice Maeterlinck, poet, dramatist, and Nobel laureate (1862-1949)

Creativity

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

- Charles Mingus

Giving Honour

If you roll out the red carpet for a billionaire, they won't even notice it. If you roll out the red carpet for a millionaire, they expect it. If you roll out the red carpet for a thousandaire, they appreciate it. If you roll out the red carpet for a hundredaire, they tell everybody they know.

- Patricia Fripp

Identity

How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.

- Stephen Covey

Journeys

The journey to discovery of your strength and your beauty begins as a tiny seed nurtured through the droughts and the harsh winters struggling towards the light to form a single bud which slowly opens its petals to reveal its beauty for the world to gaze in wonder.

Perspective

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

- Charles Swindoll

Choices

Keep in mind that you are always saying 'no' to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things. Even when the urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contribution, if you let it.

- Stephen Covey

Putting things in order

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.

- Confucius

Options

It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.

- Whitney Young, Jr.

The Cost of Quitting

Have you ever considered the cost of quitting? For a real eye opener...ask Thomas Edison...Steve Jobs...Michael Jordan...or Jim Carrey...ask them how much it would have cost them if they had quit...what about you?

- Doug Firebaugh

Your greatest asset

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

- Brian Tracy