Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.
—Robert H. Schuller (American Televangelist, Author)
To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.
—Zoltan Kodaly (Hungarian Composer)
Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.
—Henepola Gunaratana (Sri Lankan Buddhist Monk)
Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)
Our home joys are the most delightful earth affords, and the joy of parents in their children is the most holy joy of humanity. It makes their hearts pure and good, it lifts men up to their Father in heaven.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (Swiss Educator)
The true wealth of a nation consists not in the stored-up gold but in the intellectual and physical strength of its people.
—C. V. Raman (Indian Physicist)
It is safer to be a speculator than an investor in the sense that a speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.
—John Maynard Keynes (English Economist)
An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand.
—Nagarjuna (Indian Buddhist Philosopher)
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)
When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.
—Protagoras (Ancient Greek Philosopher)
Perhaps 90 percent of its desires, psychologists say, are unconscious; in other words, many of our deepest commitments to symbols of security, power, and affection in the culture are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve.
—Thomas Keating (American Trappist Monk)
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
—Frederic Bastiat (French Political Economist)