Right Attitudes

Advertising is the principal reason why the businessman has come to inherit the earth.
—James Randolph Adams (American Advertising Executive)

Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

Truth is not a crystal one can put in one’s pocket, but an infinite fluid into which one falls headlong.
—Robert Musil (Austrian Novelist)

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.
—Florence Nightingale (English Nurse)

In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.
—Michael Jackson (American Singer-Songwriter)

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
—Catullus (Roman Latin Poet)

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

I’ve always felt ideas were a dime a dozen. If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist)

Compromise is never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a coward.
—Reginald Wright Kauffman (American Novelist, Screenwriter)

Hate not the oppressor; for, if he is strong, thy hate increases his force of resistance; if he is weak, thy hate was needless.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Hindu Nationalist)

People do not get what they want or what they expect from the [stock] markets; they get what they deserve.
—Bill Bonner (American Finance Author)

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (Holocaust Victim)

Like other practicing historians, I am often asked what the “lessons of history” are. I answer that the only lesson I have learnt from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers.
—Ramachandra Guha (Indian Historian)

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The effect of having other interests beyond those domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along—or don’t.
—Harrison Ford (American Actor)

What I’ve learned about being angry with people is that it generally hurts you more than it hurts them.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

A heart bound by affection does not mind imminent peril. Worse than death to such a one is the sorrow which the distress of a friend inflicts.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.
—Angela Carter (English Novelist)

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from the disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do, and how you do it.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur)

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

Never ask a surgeon whether you need an operation.
—Gerhard Kocher (Swiss Publicist, Aphorist)

Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (American Nuclear Physicist)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (America Architect)

The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God’s loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting in above-average effort.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.
—Rita Mae Brown (American Writer, Feminist)

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)

The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise, one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.
—C. A. Dykstra (American Government Administrator)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today… Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but want a different one.
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy—your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.
—Annie Leibovitz (American Photographer)

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

People who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Yoga, an ancient but perfect science, deals with the evolution of humanity. This evolution includes all aspects of one’s being, from bodily health to self-realization. Yoga means union—the union of body with consciousness and consciousness with the soul. Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions.
—B. K. S. Iyengar (Indian Hindu Yoga Teacher)

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
—Eddie Murphy (American Actor)

Sometimes saying no is easier than saying yes … when I need it, my strength to say no is bolstered by knowing that every no is a yes to something else.
—Jessica Paris (American Educator)

You are a fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don’t do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Engineer)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

The best investment on earth is earth.
—Louis J. Glickman (American Real Estate Investor)

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
—Paul Cezanne (French Painter)

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation … Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person—it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen … to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crises, maintain their neutrality.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
—Joseph Stalin (Soviet Leader)

Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.
—James Grant (American Writer, Publisher)

We can tell how well we’ve lived by how much hope we’ve left behind.
—Bob Goff (American Philanthropist)

My main life lesson from investing: self-interest is the most powerful force on earth, and can get people to embrace and defend almost anything.
—Jesse Lauriston Livermore (American Investor)

Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you have witness, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

You must intensify and render continuous by repeatedly presenting with suggestive ideas and mental pictures of the feast of good things, and the flowing fountain, which awaits the successful achievement or attainment of the desires.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

We shouldn’t be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.
—Noam Chomsky (American Linguist, Social Critic)

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

To create is to resist, to resist is to create.
—Stephane Hessel (French Diplomat, Writer)

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

If you wish to avoid seeing a fool you must first break your mirror.
—Francois Rabelais (French Humanist, Satirist)

In solitude, where we are least alone.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Through loving devotion, their ego evaporates.
—The Guru Granth Sahib (Sacred Text of Sikhism)

The gods even envy him whose senses, like horses well broken in by the driver, have been subdued, who is free from pride, and free from appetites.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)