Right Attitudes

Cling steadfastly to that which is good.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Family is just accident…. They don’t mean to get on your nerves. They don’t even mean to be your family, they just are.
—Marsha Norman (American Playwright)

Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

When the wise is angry, he is wise no longer.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks.
—Charles A. Garfield

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

It is better to live with wild beasts wandering in the mountains, than with fools even in the comfortable and heavenly halls of the Lord of Gods.
—Neetishatakam

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination—everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Respectable men and women content with good and easy living are missing some of the most important things in life. Unless you give yourself to some great cause you haven’t even begun to live.
—William P. Merrill

Nothing comes merely by thinking about it.
—John Wanamaker (American Merchant, Civil Servant)

Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

There is a growing strength in women, but it’s in the forehead, not in the forearm.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Sleep is a healing balm for every ill.
—Menander

Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.
—Jimmy Fallon (American Comedian)

I’ve always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

What are numbers knit|By force or custom? Man who man would be,|Must rule the empire of himself; in it|Must be supreme, establishing his throne|On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy|Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
—George Soros (American Investor)

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

I think the world really boils down to two types of people – those who see shapes in cloud formations, and those who just see clouds.
—Danzae Pace

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

I’m not happy, I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Absence lessens half-hearted passions, and increases great ones, as the wind puts out candles and yet stirs up the fire.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
—Unknown

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Let us ask ourselves; “What kind of people do we think we are?”
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

What you’ve got to do is be honest. Say what you believe. Give it to them straight. Just don’t wuss out.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
—Jerry Seinfeld (American Comedian)

It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.
—Robert J. Shiller

The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep..
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Showing up is 80 percent of life.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

A goal properly set is halfway reached.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Don’t try to see God, but act in such a way that God will want to see you.
—Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he is worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.
—James Cash Penney (American Entrepreneur)

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags – they’re gonna cough.
—Barbra Streisand (American Musician)

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted, it belongs to the brave.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

Dogma does not mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

All search is vain, until we begin to perceive that wisdom is within ourselves … then we may know the sun is rising, that the morning is breaking for us.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

I can’t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

Be eager to acquire knowledge; it does not come to thee by inheritance.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you want to become the kind of person that any company would kill to have as an employee, you need to be the kind of employee that’s really picky about who you align with.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Catholic Humanist)

Giving advice makes the recipient feel less efficacious, so weigh that against the benefit your advice will likely yield.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

There’s something just as inevitable as death. And that’s life.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

Surrounded by people who love life, you love it too; surrounded by people who don’t, you don’t.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy—and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

The madman thinks the rest of the world crazy.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Apologies only account for that which they do not alter.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

As you inquire into issues and turn judgments around, you come to see that every perceived problem appearing “out there” is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

I wanted to indulge and explore my love of humanity and especially my concern for persons less fortunate than myself.
—Arthur Ashe (American Sportsperson)

Far more of life’s pleasures are in the process than in the outcome. Be in the moment.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organize your entire life around it.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)