Right Attitudes

Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you’ve got.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

I believe that all religions are true and different religions are only the different ways to the same God. For me God is the power of life and justice and when I am talking about God I am just talking about happiness to live and to enjoy life on earth. I feel that humanity should be one, that mankind should not be divided. The people should together work for much good. Well, this is my belief in God. Maybe I am not clear.
—Svetlana Alliluyeva (Russian Defector, Memoirist)

The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research.
—Paul Dirac (English Theoretical Physicist)

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.
—Thorstein Veblen (American Economist)

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.
—John Lubbock (English Politician, Biologist)

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.
—Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Russian Poet, Dissident)

One good punch on your enemy’s nose, gives more pleasure than hearing well-meaning advice from your elders.
—Tibetan Proverb

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

In the search for character and commitment, we must rid ourselves of our inherited, even cherished biases and prejudices. Character, ability and intelligence are not concentrated in one sex over the other, nor in persons with certain accents or in certain races or in persons holding degrees from some universities over others. When we indulge ourselves in such irrational prejudices, we damage ourselves most of all and ultimately assure ourselves of failure in competition with those more open and less biased.
—J. Irwin Miller (American Industrialist)

Many a man never fails because he never tries.
—Norman MacEwen (British Military Leader)

We must be truthful and fair in the ordinary affairs of life before we can be truthful and fair in patriotism and religion.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack.
—Soong Mei-ling (Chinese Political Figure)

One individual may die for an idea, but that idea will, after his death, incarnate itself in a thousand lives.
—Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian Nationalist Leader)

It’s true that heroes are inspiring, but mustn’t they also do some rescuing if they are to be worthy of their name? Would Wonder Woman matter if she only sent commiserating telegrams to the distressed?
—Jeanette Winterson (English Novelist)

Calmness is the cradle of power.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (American Editor, Novelist)

Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.
—Jean Baudrillard (French Sociologist, Philosopher)

Tradition wears a snowy beard.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (American Poet, Abolitionist)

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.
—James Earl Jones (American Actor)

Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.
—William of Ockham (English Philosopher, Polemicist)

Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.
—George William Russell (Irish Author)

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
—Alexandre Dumas pere (French Novelist, Playwright)

In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.
—Alistair Cooke (British-American Journalist)

Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.
—Maurice Blanchot (French Novelist, Critic)

There cannot be a more glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he may render himself most acceptable to the Creator by doing good to his creatures.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

There are no old people nowadays; they are either ‘wonderful for their age’ or dead.
—Mary Pettibone Poole (American Aphorist)

So that ends my first experience of matrimony, which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.
—Isadora Duncan (American Dancer)

He who has known how to love the land has loved eternity.
—Stefan Zeromski (Polish Novelist)

Let us be careful to distinguish modesty, which is ever amiable, from reserve, which is only prudent. A man is hated sometimes for pride, when it was an excess of humility gave the occasion.
—William Shenstone (English Poet)

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

Dharma is not upheld by talking about it. Dharma is upheld by living in harmony with it.
—Buddhist Teaching

The conductor must make it possible to eliminate himself in the music. If the orchestra feels him doing that, then everything will go well.
—Giuseppe Sinopoli (Italian Conductor, Composer)

Think you are weak, think you lack what it takes, think you will lose, think you are second class—think this way and you are doomed to mediocrity.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself… Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.
—George Gershwin (American Composer)

There’s small Revenge in Words, but Words may be greatly revenged.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

The entire global business community is learning to learn together, becoming a learning community.
—Peter Senge (American Management Consultant)

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.
—Ellen Glasgow (American Novelist)

Gratitude—the meanest and most sniveling attribute in the world.
—Dorothy Parker (American Humorist, Journalist)

Pray not for lighter burdens, but for stronger backs.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Never dig up in unbelief what you have sown in faith.
—James Gordon Lindsay (American Pentecostal Pastor)

O grant me, Heaven, a middle state,
Neither too humble nor too great;
More than enough, for nature’s ends,
With something left to treat my friends.
—David Mallet (Scottish Poet, Dramatist)

Sentimentality—that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.
—Graham Greene (British Novelist)

There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)