Archives for August 2012

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
—Masanobu Fukuoka (Japanese Buddhist Polymath)

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
—Charles F. Kettering (American Inventor)

We only have one future, and it will be made of our dreams, if we have the courage to challenge convention.
—Soichiro Honda (Japanese Inventor)

Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
—Linus Pauling (American Chemist)

A man is ever apt to contemplate himself out of all proportion to his surroundings.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

What you do when you don’t have to determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.
—Brian Friel

There’s nothing more ironic or contradictory than life itself.
—Robert De Niro (American Actor)

Get into a line that you will find to be a deep personal interest, something you really enjoy spending twelve to fifteen hours a day working at, and the rest of the time thinking about.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course.
—Michelangelo (Italian Painter)

Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment, you shouldn’t let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
—Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Poet)

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
—Samuel Goldwyn (Polish-born American Film Producer)

If you perform the sacrifice of doing your duty, you do not have to do anything else. Devoted to duty, man attains perfection.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The people who have achieved more than you, in any area, are only a half step ahead of you in time. Bless them and praise their gifts, and bless and praise your own. The world would be less rich without their contributions, and it would be less rich without yours. There’s more than room for everyone; in fact, there’s a need for everyone.
—Marianne Williamson (American Activist)

You go back to the gym and you just do it again and again until you get it right.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-born American Actor)

Happiness is something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation?
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Expressions of disapproval are on a level of vulgarity that cannot be tolerated. The way to express disapproval is to do without applause.
—Rudolf Bing

The mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.
—Turkish Proverb

We need a new ethos of greater responsibility and caring.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (American Head of State)

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
—William James (American Philosopher)

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

If I love you, what business is it of yours?
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

The reasoning man who scorns the prejudices of simpletons necessarily becomes the enemy of simpletons; he must expect as much, and laugh at the inevitable.
—Marquis de Sade (French Political leader)

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn of falsehoods.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)