Right Attitudes

All fair in love and war.
—Francis Edward Smedley

Liberal education develops a sense of right, duty and honor; and more and more in the modern world, large business rests on rectitude and honor as well as on good judgment.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering—because you can’t take it in all at once.
—Audrey Hepburn (Belgian-born British Actor)

You know that it is only through work that you can achieve anything, either in college or in the world
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

You ought to be true for the sake of the folks who think you are true. You never should stoop to a deed that your folks think you would not do. If you are false to yourself, be the blemish but small, you have injured your folks; you have been false to them all.
—Edgar Guest (English-born American Poet)

The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?
—Edwin Markham (American Poet)

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
—George Marshall (American Military Leader)

The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.
—Colin Wilson (British Philosopher)

Laboring toward distant aims set the mind in a higher key and puts us at our best.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
—Lynda Barry (American Cartoonist)

Give wind and tide a chance to change.
—Richard Evelyn Byrd (American Aviator)

One cannot expect to coast along and rise automatically to the top, no matter what friends you may have in the company. There may have been a time when, in large corporations, a person could rise simply because he had a stock interest or because he had friends in top management. That’s not true today. Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.
—David Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

A complacent satisfaction with present knowledge is the chief bar to the pursuit of knowledge.
—B. H. Liddell Hart (English Historian)

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production, and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.
—Adam Smith (Scottish Philosopher)

To sleep is an act of faith
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (American Journalist)

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.
—Dorothea Brande (American Writer)

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

There should be no inferiors and no superiors for true world friendship.
—Carlos P. Romulo (Philippine Diplomat)

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.
—Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (French Socialite)

The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

After some time passed in studying – and even imitating – the works of others, I would recommend the student to endeavour to be original, and to remember that originality should not be undiscovered plagiarism.
—Henry Peach Robinson

A rich man, of cultivated tastes, with every right to gratify them, knowing enough of sorrow to humble his heart toward God, and soften it toward his neighbor—gifted with not only the power but will to do good, and having lived long enough to reap the fruits of an honorable youth in a calm old age—such a man, in spite of his riches, is not unlikely to enter the kingdom of heaven.
—Dinah Craik (English Novelist)

The prosperous man is never sure that he is loved for himself.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus)

It is not truth, justice, liberty, that men seek; they seek only themselves. — And oh, that they knew how to seek themselves aright!
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Enthusiasm is a vital element toward the individual success of every man or woman.
—Conrad Hilton (American Business Person)

Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
—Louise Hay (American Author)

Dignity is like a perfume; those who use it are scarcely conscious of it
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

Focus on your potential instead of your limitations.
—Joe Dimaggio

In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill-will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow-men, not knowing what they do.
—John Quincy Adams (American Head of State)

The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
—Sacha Guitry (French Theater Personality)

We can be negative and cynical or we can be charged and hot wored to find a way through it, over it, around it under it.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Children’s Books Writer)

Where fear is, happiness is not.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

Time turns the old days to derision, our loves into corpses or wives; and marriage and death and division make barren our lives.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne (English Poet)

Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
—Diane Ackerman (American Children’s Books Writer)

Endurance is frequently a form of indecision.
—Elizabeth Bibesco (English Poet)

Vigilance in watching opportunity; tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement—these are the martial virtues which must command success.
—Austin Phelps (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

You begin by always expecting good things to happen.
—Tom Hopkins (English Sportsperson)

Success is the satisfaction of feeling that one is realizing one’s ideal.
—Anna Pavlova (Russian Dancer)

I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of rage and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)

After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Businessperson)

Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought.
—Martin Heidegger (German Existential Philosopher)

First health, then wealth, then pleasure, and do not owe anything to anybody.
—Catherine II of Russia (Russian Empress)

All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
—Charles William Eliot (American Educator)

Your best teacher is your last mistake.
—Ralph Nader (American Activist)

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (American Educator)

Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.
—Sam Walton (American Entrepreneur)

A man doesn’t begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.
—Richard Evelyn Byrd (American Aviator)