Right Attitudes

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.
—John C. Bogle (American Mutual Fund Pioneer)

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Most of us follow our conscience as we follow a wheelbarrow. We push it in front of us in the direction we want to go.
—Billy Graham (American Baptist Religious Leader)

Most people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won’t make them happy. Don’t.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

I’m not into the money thing. You can only sleep in one bed at a time. You can only eat one meal at a time, or be in one car at a time. So I don’t have to have millions of dollars to be happy. All I need are clothes on my back, a decent meal, and a little loving when I feel like it. That’s the bottom line.
—Ray Charles (American Singer)

Man is the roof and crown of creation. He may be tossed about by uncertain storms of life, but the solution to it lies in his own efforts in finding an ideal, and then raising his personality, from the level of petty emotions, to the loftier heights of the chosen ideal.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relationships with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first line attention.
—William Hewlett (American Engineer, Businessperson)

Our careers aren’t paths so much as landscapes that are navigated. We’re free agents, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs—each with our own unique brand.
—Keith Ferrazzi (American Author)

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also—if you love them enough.
—George Washington Carver (American Scientist)

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

If one can only realize at heart what one’s true nature is, one then will find that it is infinite wisdom, truth, and bliss, without beginning and without end.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The only way you can live a truly creative life or know the highest happiness is by developing your own unique potential.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.
—John Wanamaker (American Merchant, Civil Servant)

The meaning of man’s life, as we have seen, is not measured by what he has, but by what he is. No matter how many possessions we have amassed, how much wealth we have accrued, how respected and secure our position is in society, how numerous the pieces of information we have accumulated, in moments of lucidity we may still abruptly perceive the dreadful futility of it all, the overwhelming emptiness and pointlessness of such a life.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.
—Eckhart Tolle (German Spiritual Writer)

He who rolls up his sleeves seldom loses his shirt.
—Caroline Schoeder (American Aphorist)

Inspiration and genius—one and the same.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

What is the point of getting angry with others who are angry with you? Getting angry is senseless. It is self-destructive. If you have fire in your house it will burn down your own house, Likewise your anger will hurt you. Oh Lord, help me to deal with my anger.
—Basava (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

The human head is bigger than the globe. It conceives itself as containing more. It can think and rethink itself and ourselves from any desired point outside the gravitational pull of the earth. It starts by writing one thing and later reads itself as something else. The human head is monstrous.
—Gunter Grass (German Novelist, Poet)

It is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than your own.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

People don’t change. Only their costumes do.
—Gene Moore (American Designer, Window Dresser)

It’ll take a smart person with passion over someone with years of experience any day. People with intelligence and passion will get the problem solved, no matter what.
—Carol Bartz (American Businesswoman)

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family —but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
—Willa Cather (American Novelist)

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
—Caskie Stinnett (American Travel Writer, Humorist)

Let war stay abroad; it makes no difficulty in coming, for the man who will have in him a strong desire for glory. I disapprove of a bird’s battling in its own home.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.
—Paul Newman (American Actor, Philanthropist)

Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.
—Elias Root Beadle (American Clergyman)

The important thing in my view is not to pin the blame for a mistake on somebody, but rather to find out what caused the mistake.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserved; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life…. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don’t try to fit the system. If you do what’s expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.
—Howard Schultz (American Businessman)

A man has as much right as a woman to a good cry now and again. The snow gave me shelter; the horse understood and gave me the time.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The goal ever recedes from us? The greater the progress the greater the recognition of our unworthiness? Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Surround yourself only with people who are going to take you higher.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

To be of use in the world is the only way to happiness.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur (American Military Leader)

It is necessary to try to pass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower, and draws all good things toward you. Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others. Do not strain after the needs of life. It is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of them. In this way life proceeds more naturally and effortlessly. Life is here to Enjoy!
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out.
—Frank Sinatra (American Singer)

Man, a dunce uncouth, errs in age and youth: babies know the truth.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne (English Poet)

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

It’s not within anyone’s power to save the world, but it is within your power to add whatever you can with a loving and caring and peaceful heart.
—Jack Kornfield (American Buddhist Teacher, Author)

The best thing that can happen to a human being is to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears.
—Karl Popper (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships.
—Leo Burnett (American Journalist)

In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence.
—Anthony de Mello (Indian-born American Theologian)

Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
—George Brossin Mere (French Intellectual, Author)

Adversity not only draws people together, but brings forth that beautiful inward friendship.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Marriage is a wonderful institution… but who wants to live in an institution?
—Groucho Marx (American Actor)

Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don’t, it hurts even more.
—Aretha Franklin (American Gospel And Soul Singer)

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?…if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself—and thus make yourself indispensable.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

I did envisage being this successful as a player, but not all the hysteria around it off the golf course.
—Tiger Woods (American Sportsperson)

Whatever comes out of despair cannot bear the title of valor, which should be lifted up to such a height, that holding all things under itself, it should be able to maintain its greatness, even in the midst of miseries.
—Philip Sidney (English Soldier, Poet, Courtier)

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Sometimes we laugh because a joke is funny. Sometimes we laugh to show we’re smart enough to understand the joke in question.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Then what makes a beautiful human being? Isn’t it the presence of human excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful, then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those whom you praise without prejudice. The just or the unjust? The just. The even-tempered or the undisciplined? The even-tempered. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled. In making yourself that kind of person, you will become beautiful—but to the extent you ignore these qualities, you’ll be ugly, even if you use every trick in the book to appear beautiful.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit—the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hour-glass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly-bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
—Lady Bird Johnson (American Entrepreneur)

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.
—Alexander Graham Bell (Scottish-born American Inventor)

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
—William James (American Philosopher)

A company has a responsibility beyond making a profit for stockholders; it has a responsibility to recognize the dignity of its employees as human beings, to the well-being of its customers, and to the community at large.
—David Packard (American Businessperson)

We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people…What the electorate gives, the electorate can take away.
—Tony Blair (British Statesman)

Rather throw away that which is dearest to you, your own life, than turn away a good friend.
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Do not appease thy fellow in his hour of anger; do not comfort him while the dead is still laid out before him; do not question him in the hour of his vow; and do not strive to see him in his hour of misfortune.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

I like nonsense—it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope… and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
—Vladimir Nabokov (Russian-born American Novelist)

With maturity comes the wish to economize—to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure.
—Bela Bartok (Hungarian Composer, Ethnomusicologist)

He who does not rouse himself when it is time to rise, who, though young and strong, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle man will never find the way to knowledge.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Don’t look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don’t think with your head, think with your hands.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

The most fundamental problem of politics, which is not the control of wickedness but the limitation of righteousness.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

It is possible to live happily in the here and now. So many conditions of happiness are available—more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better, silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Always so act that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied … but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.
—John Berger (English Art Critic, Essayist, Novelist)

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

With just enough of learning to misquote.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Our only true course is to let the motive for action be in the action itself, never in its reward; not to be incited by the hope of the result, nor yet indulge a propensity for inertness.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

There are two different states of human existence: first, to live without thinking of death; second, to live with the thought that you approach death with every hour of your life.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

But life is a battle: may we all be enabled to fight it well.
—Charlotte Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)

People who study psychology and the pitfalls of the human mind are no less prone to making errors of judgement and cognition than people who don’t know anything about it.
—Jason Zweig (American Personal Finance Columnist)

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the sailor and the traveler, thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet home!
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

A road might end at a single house, but it’s not love’s road. Love is a river. Drink from it.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa (American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer)

Incentives are spurs that goad a man to do what he doesn’t particularly like, to get something he does particularly want. They are rewards he voluntarily strives for.
—Paul G. Hoffman (American Businessperson)

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among men the greatest asset I possess. The way to develop the best that is in a man is by appreciation and encouragement.
—Charles M. Schwab (American Businessperson)

If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you and you have to battle with only one of them.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
—Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

Everything in moderation, including moderation.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Quit what you suck at.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes—or it prospers; and anon, like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, lighting a little hour or two—is gone.
—Omar Khayyam (Persian Mathematician)

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you are riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind.
—Bob Marley (Jamaican Musician)

When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a family all wrapped up in each other.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (American Columnist)