Right Attitudes

The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes. In fact, one trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes. Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

We gain strength from other people. We give strength to each other.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

When it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

No effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few: and number not voices, but weigh them.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

A name is a kind of face whereby one is known; wherefore taking a false name is a kind of visard whereby men disguise themselves.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

A man is known by the company he avoids.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves.
—Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)

Curiosity in children, is but an appetite for knowledge.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

The secret to humor is surprise.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

My deepest feeling about politicians is that they are dangerous lunatics to be avoided when possible and carefully humored; people, above all, to whom one must never tell the truth.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

I’d rather regret the things I have done than the things that I haven’t.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
—Paul Gauguin (French Painter)

Man while he loves is never quite depraved.
—Charles Lamb (British Essayist, Poet)

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands; in unskillful, the most mischievous.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.
—Zoroaster (Persian Religious Leader, Prophet)

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
—Thomas Hardy (English Novelist, Poet)

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

Better know nothing than half-know many things.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Five things are requisite to a good officer—ability, clean hands, despatch, patience, and impartiality.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.
—Alfred Hitchcock (British-born American Film Director)

It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Any kind of lasting success is rooted in honesty.
—Russell Simmons (American Music Promoter)

What morality requires, true statesmanship should accept.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman )

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

It didn’t occur to me until later that there’s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

This loving person is a person who abhors waste—waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Demand not that events should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.
—Pearl Bailey (American Singer, Actress)

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

Dignity and pride are of too near relationship for intermarriage.
—Dorothee Luzy Dotinville (French Dancer, Actress)

Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
—Tim Ferriss (American Self-help Author)

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

It is well to learn caution by the misfortunes of others.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

We are here not to get all we can out of life for ourselves, but to try to make the lives of others happier.
—William Osler (Canadian Physician)

It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Mediocrity doesn’t mean average intelligence, it means an average intelligence that resents and envies its betters.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

Regrets are the natural property of gray hairs.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Waste no tears over the griefs of yesterday.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The best mask for demoralization is daring.
—Lucian (Greek Satirical Writer)

If you ask me, what I have come to do in this world, I who am an artist, I will reply: I am here to live my life out loud.
—Emile Zola (French Novelist)

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament—disarmament follows peace.
—Bernard M. Baruch (American Financier)

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Every condition of life, if attended with virtue, is undisturbed and delightful; but when vice is intermixed, it renders even things that appear sumptuous and magnificent, distasteful and uneasy to the possessor.
—Plutarch (Greek Biographer)

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)

My father taught in the wise way which unfolds what lies in the child.
—Louisa May Alcott (American Novelist)

At times it is folly to hasten at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Never forget that absolutely everything you do is for your customers. Make every decision—even decisions about whether to expand the business, raise money, or promote someone—according to what’s best for your customers.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

When one is seized with a passion to understand one’s self, one has to leave behind all normal life and habitual modes of thought.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Money won’t make you happy, but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You should pardon many things in others, nothing in yourself.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)