| Favorite
Quotes, compiled by David
Reis
August 6, 1997
LEADERSHIP
AND MANAGEMENT
The leader’s most
important role is to instill confidence in
people. 1996 Harvard Business Review
The wicked leader is he who the
people despise. The good leader is he who the
people revere. The great leader is he who the
people say "We did it ourselves." (Lao
Tsu)
Disperse knowledge. (Proverbs
15:7)
The best way to knock the chip
off your neighbor’s shoulder is to pat him
on the back.
If you want to give a man
credit, do it in writing. If you want to give him
hell, do it over the phone.
Boldness becomes rarer, the
higher the rank. (Karl von Clausewitz)
Knowledgeable people know
facts. Successful and prosperous people know
people. (John Demartini)
Leadership is finding out where
everyone is going and running like hell to get
out in front.
I don’t know the key to
success, but the key to failure is trying to
please everybody. (Bill Cosby)
A partially developed plan
violently executed is superior to a perfect plan
a week too late. (George Patton)
In strategy, the longest way
round is often the shortest way home. (Liddell
Hart)
HARD WORK
AND LIFE GOALS
The will to win is not nearly
as important as the will to prepare to win.
(Bobby Knight)
Plan as if you will live
forever, live as if you will die tomorrow.
Success is a product of
unremitting attention to purpose. (Benjamin
Disraeli)
When you say you fear death you
are really saying that you fear you have not
lived your true life. (David Viscott)
I find that the harder I work,
the more luck I seem to have. (Thomas Jefferson)
Whether you think that you can
or that you can’t, you are usually right.
(Henry Ford)
Only those who attempt the
absurd will achieve the impossible. (Einstein)
Avoiding failure is not the
same as seeking success. (Roger Fritz)
Whatever you can do, or dream
you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power,
and magic in it. (Goethe)
If you don’t know where
you’re going, you’ll never get there.
(PeopleSoft presentation)
Opportunities multiply as they
are seized. (Sun Tzu)
The best way to predict the
future is to invent it. (Alan Kay)
Always take a job that is too
big for you. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)
May you live all the days of
your life. (Jonathan Swift)
Sleep, riches, and health, to
be truly enjoyed, must be interrupted. (Jean Paul
Richter)
Do, or do not. There is no
"try". (Yoda)
You miss 100% of the shots you
never take. (Wayne Gretzky)
A wise man will make more
opportunities than he finds. (Francis Bacon)
No steam or gas ever drives
anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever
turned into light and power until it is tunneled.
No life ever grows until it is focused,
dedicated, disciplined. (Harry Emerson Fosdick)
That which doesn’t kill
you makes you stronger. (Nietzsche)
Many persons think that by
hoarding money they are gaining safety for
themselves. If money is your only hope for
independence, you will never have it. The only
real security that a person can have in this
world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and
ability. Without these qualities, money is
practically useless. (Henry Ford)
Work banishes those three great
evils; boredom, vice, and poverty. (Voltaire)
It is not death that a man
should fear, but he should fear never beginning
to live. (Marcus Aurelius)
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
(Aristotle)
God helps those who help
themselves.
You may be disappointed if you
fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
(Beverly Sills)
Life is like a grindstone -
whether it grinds you down or polishes you up
depends on what you’re made of.
Never doubt that a small group
of citizens can change the world. Indeed,
it’s the only thing that has. (Margaret
Mead)
A pessimist sees the difficulty
in every opportunity; an optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty. (Winston
Churchill)
Glory is fleeting, but
obscurity is forever (Napolean)
MORALS
AND RELIGION
The saints are the sinners who
keep on trying. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
The weak can never forgive.
Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
(Mahatma Gandhi)
He that is without sin among
you, let him first cast a stone at her.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)
Judge not, that ye be not
judged. (Matthew 7:1)
"Am I not destroying my
enemies when I make friends of them?" --
Abraham Lincoln
Seek, and ye shall find.
(Matthew 7:7)
A man hath no better thing
under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to
be merry. (Ecclesiastes 8:15)
It is more blessed to give than
to receive. (Acts 20:35)
Ye suffer fools gladly. (2
Corinthians 11:19)
He that loveth his wife loveth
himself. (Ephesians 5:28)
A broken spirit drieth the
bones. (Proverbs 17:22)
Neglect not the gift that is in
thee. (1 Timothy 4:14)
Before honor is humility.
(Proverbs 15:33)
A merry heart maketh a cheerful
countenance. (Proverbs 15:13)
The only thing necessary for
the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing. (Edmund Burke)
Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome,
charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating
in one little corner of the earth. (Mark Twain)
Compassion is defined by how
you treat people that can do you no good.
Be in the world, but not of it.
(Jesus)
Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere. (Martin Luther King)
First they came for the Jews
and I didn’t protest. Then they came for the
trade unionists and I didn’t protest. Then
they came for the Catholics and I didn’t
protest. Then they came for me and there was no
one left to protest. (Father __________, I
don’t have this quote exactly right)
FREEDOM
Democracy does not guarantee
equality of conditions - it only guarantees
equality of opportunity. (Irving Kristol)
That government is best which
governs the least, because its people discipline
themselves. (Jefferson)
Important principles may and
must be inflexible. (Lincoln)
You cannot strengthen the weak
by weakening the strong. (Lincoln)
You cannot build character and
courage by taking away a man’s initiative
and independence. (Lincoln)
It has been said that democracy
is the worst form of government except all the
others that have been tried. (Churchill)
I disapprove of what you say,
but I will defend to death your right to say it.
(Voltaire)
"Each of us has a natural
right -- from God to defend his person, his
liberty, and his property. These are the three
basic requirements of life, and the preservation
of any one of them is completely dependent upon
the preservation of the other two. For what are
our faculties but the extension of our
individuality? And what is property but an
extension of our faculties?" -- Bastiat
If I silence my opponent now,
he may silence me in the future.
A government which robs Peter
to pay Paul can always count on Paul’s
support. ( George Bernard Shaw)
It is true that freedom is
precious, so precious it must be rationed.
(Lenin)
Nothing is more familiar in
taxation than the imposition of a tax upon a
class or upon individuals who enjoy no direct
benefit from its expenditure, and who are not
responsible for the condition to be remedied.
(Justice Harlan F. Stone)
"Of all tyrannies, a
tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may
be the most oppressive. It may be better to live
under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may
sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point
be satiated; but those who torment us for our own
good will torment us without end, for they do so
with the approval of their consciences." --
C.S. Lewis
"Experience should teach
us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the government's purposes are
beneficent....the greatest dangers to liberty
lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but without understanding." --
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
It’s better to die on your
feet than live on your knees.
GUN CONTROL
"The only purpose for
which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilized community, against his
will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good,
either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant." -- John Stuart Mill, "On
Liberty" 1859
"A government resting on
the minority is an aristocracy, not a Republic,
and could not be safe with a numerical and
physical force against it, without a standing
army, an enslaved press and a disarmed
populace." -- James Madison, The Federalist
Papers (No. 46).
"Americans have the right
and advantage of being armed - unlike the
citizens of other countries whose governments are
afraid to trust the people with arms." --
James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46 at
243-244
"No man shall ever be
debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason
for the people to retain the right to keep and
bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect
themselves against the tyranny in government. --
Thomas Jefferson, June 1776
"They that would give up
essential liberty for a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin
"What, Sir, is the use of
a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of
a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever
Governments mean to invade the rights and
liberties of the people, they always attempt to
destroy the militia, in order to raise an army
upon their ruins." -- Rep. Eldridge Gerry of
Massachusetts (spoken during floor debate over
the Second Amendment [I Annals of Congress at 750
{August 17, 1789}])
"In recent years it has
been suggested that the Second Amendment protects
the "collective" right of states to
maintain militias, while it does not protect the
right of "the people" to keep and bear
arms... The phrase "the people" meant
the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did
in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments
-- that is, each and every free person. A select
militia defined as only the privileged class
entitled to keep and bear arms was considered an
anathema to a free society, in the same way that
Americans denounced select spokesmen approved by
the government as the only class entitled to the
freedom of the press." -- Stephen P.
Holbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed: The
Evolution of a Constitutional Right",
University of New Mexico Press, 1984, pp. 83-84.
"The right of self-defense
is the first law of nature; in most governments
it has been the study of rulers to confine this
right within the narrowest possible limits....
and [when] the right of the people to keep and
bear arms is, under any color or pretext
whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already
annihilated, is on the brink of
destruction." -- St. George Tucker, Judge of
the Virginia Supreme Court and U.S. District
Court of Virginia in, I Blackstone COMMENTARIES
St. George Tucker, Editor, 1803, pg. 300 (App.)
"No kingdom can be secured
otherwise than by arming the people. The
possession of arms is the distinction between a
freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who
himself belongs to another, must be defended by
him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But
he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what
he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend
himself, and what he possesses; else he lives
precariously, and at discretion." -- James
Burgh "Political Disquisitions: Or, an
Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and
Abuses" [London, 1774-1775]
No free man shall ever be
debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason
for the people to retain their right to keep and
bear arms is as a last resort to protect
themselves against tyranny in government. (Thomas
Jefferson)
"A sword never kills
anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand."
-- Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)
"The most foolish mistake
we could possibly make would be to allow the
subject races to possess arms. History shows that
all conquerors who have allowed their subject
races to carry arms have prepared their own
downfall by doing so." -- Adolf Hitler
"Among the many misdeeds
of the British rule in India, history will look
upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms,
as the blackest." -- Mahatma Ghandi
COMEDY
"When I go, I want to go
like Grandpa, sleeping peacefully. Not screaming
like the passengers in his car."
"If you don't have a sense
of humor, it isn't funny." -- Wavy Gravy
I am not young enough to know
everything. (Oscar Wilde)
The covers of this book are too
far apart. (Ambrose Bierce, in a book review)
When choosing between two
evils, I always like to try the one I’ve
never tried before. (Mae West)
You can get more with a kind
word and a gun than you can with a kind word
alone. (Al Capone)
If you wait until the last
minute, it only takes a minute!
"Life is tough. Being
stupid makes it tougher." John Wayne
Nothing in life is so
exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
(Winston Churchill)
I think it would be a good
idea. (Mahatma Ghandi, when asked what he thought
of Western civilization.)
I had a wonderful evening.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t it. (Groucho)
I don’t want to achieve
immortality through my work. I want to achieve it
through not dying. (Woody Allen)
I don’t care to belong to
any organization that accepts me as a member.
(Groucho)
It matters not whether you win
or lose’ what matters is whether I win or
lose. (Darrin Weinberg)
All my life I always wanted to
be somebody. Now I see that I should have been
more specific.
"Lou Gehrig died of Lou
Gehrig's Disease. How could you not see that
coming?" - Dennis Leary
You can't have everything.
Where would you put it? Steven Wright
I was reading the dictionary. I
thought it was a poem about everything. -- Steven
Wright
Enjoy yourself. If you
can’t enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else.
(Jack Schaefer)
OTHER
He can compress the most words
into the smallest idea of any man I know.
(Abraham Lincoln)
It’s not the size of the
dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight
in the dog. (Mark Twain)
It is better to be feared than
loved, if you cannot be both. (Machiavelli)
In the game of life, you get no
points for being victimized; you do, however,
score big for getting over it. --Paige Tillery
There are only two ways to live
your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
(Einstein)
Of all the things you wear,
your expression is the most important.
Don’t be so humble, you
are not that great. (Golda Meir)
Being on the tightrope is
living, everything else is waiting. (Karl
Wallenda)
Never in the field of human
conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
(Churchill re the Battle of Britain)
Speak softly and carry a big
stick, you will go far. (T. Roosevelt)
Each day of our lives we make
deposits in the memory banks of our children. (C.
Swindoll)
Everything should be made as
simple as possible, but no simpler. (Einstein)
Courage is grace under
pressure. (Hemingway)
Don’t be so open minded
that your brain falls out.
Great spirits have always found
violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter
cannot understand it when a man does not
thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but
honestly and courageously uses his
intelligence." -Einstein, Albert
I think, therefore I am.
(Descartes)
No one can make you inferior
without your consent.
If you don’t know where
you’re going, any road will take you there.
Time exists so that not
everything happens at once.
War is based on deception. (Sun
Tzu)
To secure peace is to prepare
for war. (Clausewitz)
Most people would rather die
than think; in fact, they do so. (Bertrand
Russell)
No great genius ever existed
without some touch of madness. (Seneca)
Yesterday is history,
tomorrow’s a mystery, and today is a gift,
which is why it’s called the present.
Happiness is a choice.
Depression is a state of mind. (David Reis)
I try to take one day at a
time, but sometimes several days attack me at
once. (Ashleigh Brilliant)
The graveyards are full of
indispensable people. (Charles de Gaulle)
Knowledge of self is the source
of our abilities. (Lao Tzu)
Whatever is flexible and
flowing will tend to grow; whatever is rigid and
blocked will wither and die. (Lao Tzu)
Faithful servants are always
servants and good men are always poor.
(Machiavelli)
The less effort, the faster and
more powerful you will be. (Bruce Lee)
Do not deprive someone of hope.
It might be all they have.
A warm smile is the universal
language of kindness. (William Arthur Ward)
Education’s purpose is to
replace an empty mind with an open one. (Malcom
Forbes)
Try not to become a success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
(Einstein)
Irish Blessing: May the road
rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at
your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And the rains fall soft upon your fields. And
until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm
of his hand.
The field of battle is a land
of the living dead: those determined to die will
live, and those who hope to escape with their
lives will die. (Wu-Ch’I)
"If you can't explain it
simply, you don't understand it well
enough." -- Albert Einstein
"If you have an apple and
I have an apple and we exchange these apples,
then you and I will still each have one apple.
But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we
exchange these ideas, then each of us will have
two ideas." -- Attributed to George Bernard
Shaw
"All cruelty springs from
weakness." -- Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)
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