100 of My Favorite Quotes (and a Few of my Own)

1. "Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh


2. "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." - Confucius


3. "Like a boat moving through the water, each of us creates a wake. In the organizations that form the communities of our lives, our wakes have important consequences. In our businesses, on our teams, with our associates, in our communities and homes, we want a positive wake—one that lifts others but does not capsize them.
   
   A positive wake is critical to our success, to our relationships, to our leadership. But there is only one way to determine the impact our wake has on others. They must tell us. That’s why feedback is a gift." - Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D. and Marshall Goldsmith, Ph.D.


4. "The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment." - Earl Nightingale


5. "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Meade


6. "Life’s creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers." - Ester Buchholz


7. "Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be." - Henry David Thoreau


8. "I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." - Frank Lloyd Wright


9. "Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." - John Lennon


10. "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein


11. "There are many hurdles on the way to living our dreams, but the sad part is that most of them have been placed into existence by our minds, and thus we as individuals are the only ones ultimately capable of removing them (or at least getting around them)." - Iain Hamp


12. "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." - Alfred North Whitehead


13. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin


14. "If you desire something more than everyone else combined desires the opposite, then your desire is significantly more likely to come to pass." - Iain Hamp


15. "If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path." - Buddhist saying


16. "If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody." - Chinese Proverb


17. "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank


18. "Our friends should be companions who inspire us, who help us rise to our best. - Joseph B. Wirthlin


19. "Your mind has the potential to be incredibly powerful, regardless of how you choose to use it. Wielded wisely, it can be an incredibly potent tool for good." - Iain Hamp


20. "Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success." - Dale Carnegie


21. "The future influences the present just as much as the past." - Friedrich Nietzsche


22. "The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it." - Sydney Harris


23. "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein


24. "There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep." - Homer


25. "When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said 'No, I made a few mistakes.'" - Steven Wright


26. "Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments" - Jim Rohn


27. "There are no stupid questions, just people unwilling to answer them." - Iain Hamp


28. "Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." - Immanuel Kant


29. "When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers." - Colleen C Barrett


30. "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo


31. "Self-trust is the first secret of success." - Ralph Waldo Emerson


32. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain


33. "The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster." - Susan Sontag


34. "If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach." - Margaret Cho


35. "The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value." - Charles Dudley Warner


36. "Sometimes I just look at my bowl of cereal in the morning and think about those hundreds of people who were involved in bringing me my bowl of cereal: the farmers in the field; the biochemists who made the pesticides; the warehouse workers at the food preparation plants; even the marketers who somehow persuaded me to buy this box of cereal and not a different one sitting next to it on a shelf. I know it sounds strange, but I give thanks to these people, and just doing that makes me feel more involved with life, more connected to things, less alone." - Rose T., psychologist


37. "Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." - Mahatma Gandhi


38. "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Winston Churchill


39. "The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives." - Anthony Robbins


40. "Remember the flight attendant's advice... you must put on your own oxygen mask first." - Kathy Sierra


41. "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Herman Cain


42. "I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut." - Goethe


43. "The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson


44. "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return." - Leonardo da Vinci


45. "A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting." - Henry David Thoreau


46. "I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work." - Thomas Edison


47. "I don’t care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don’t harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you’re never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants." - Zig Ziglar


48. "The kind of commitment I find among the best performers across virtually every field is a single-minded passion for what they do, an unwavering desire for excellence in the way they think and the way they work. Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step." - Jim Collins


49. "One of the things that may get in the way of people being lifelong learners is that they’re not in touch with their passion. If you’re passionate about what it is you do, then you’re going to be looking for everything you can to get better at it." - Jack Canfield


50. "My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities." - Albert Einstein


51. "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein


52. "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." – Ralph Waldo Emerson


53. "The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat." – Napoleon Hill


54. "I certainly don't regret my experiences because without them, I couldn't imagine who or where I would be today. Life is an amazing gift to those who have overcome great obstacles, and attitude is everything!" - Sasha Azevedo
    


55. "Reality doesn't bite, rather our perception of reality bites.” - Anthony J D'Angelo


56. "Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately” - John Updike


57. "In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better." - Edward de Bono


58. "There is no truth. There is only perception." - Gustave Flaubert


59. "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha


60. "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself." - Abraham Maslow


61. "For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can." - Ernest Hemmingway


62. "Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped." - Lillian Hellman


63. "Get your ideas on paper and study them. Do not let them go to waste!" - Les Brown


64. "Let's not lead our lives filled with I could have, I should have, or if I only had... let it be I can, I will, and I did. Period!"


65. "I dwell in possibility." - Emily Dickinson


66. "Somebody should tell us right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limits, every minute of every day. Do it I say! Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows." - Michael Landon
    


67. "The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire." - Marshall Foch
    


68. "Finding forgiveness, gratitude, and love for people and events that have hurt you is a powerful part of healing." - Urban Monk


69. "The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment." - Earl Nightingale
    


70. "The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses - behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." - Muhammad Ali
    


71. "You can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out a fire. Once the flame begins to catch, the wind will blow it higher." - Peter Gabriel


72. "We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought." - Alfred North Whitehead
    


73. "I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection." - Billy Joel
    


74. "How we dream is what gives our lives value. How we choose to live is what determines whether our dreams have value. I believe we each carry a dream of a life we were born to realize which shows up through desire. And I believe that we all have the ability to realize our personal and professional dreams if we commit ourselves to not settling for anything less than what we really want. It is when we move toward our passions that we experience our own greatness and it is then an incredible contribution to ourselves and to the world is made by being who we truly are." - Donna Karlin


75. "When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy." - Jack Handy


76. "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan


77. "You can't put a price tag on love, but there are credit limits." - The Tick


78. "Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie." - Jim Davis


79. "Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." - Benjamin Disraeli


80. "To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development." - Felix Adler


81. "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." - Dalai Lama


82. "Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." - Arundhati Roy


83. "At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
    Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." - Albert Schweitzer


84. "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." - John F. Kennedy


85. "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso


86. "Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier." - Kathleen Norris


87. "Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal." - Lenore Hershey


88. "Nice guys may finish last, but they also finish best." - Iain Hamp


89. "I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost


90. "It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power." - Alan Cohen


91. "They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." - Andy Warhol


92. "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin


93. "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome." - Anne Bradstreet


94. "The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?" - Henry David Thoreau


95. "It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away." - Bono, U2


96. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


97. "It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it." - Albert Einstein


98. "Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow." - Thornton Wilder


99. "No one has ever become poor by giving." - Anne Frank


100. "Do, or do not. There is no try." - Yoda