FAVOURITE QUOTATIONS

Innovation | Getting Things Done | Life - Work Balance | Truths? | Self | Willpower | Leadership

Innovation & Invention

  • A problem well stated is a problem half solved. -- Charles F. Kettering
  • An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously. -- Charles F. Kettering
  • Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down. -- Charles F. Kettering
  • Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. -- Charles F. Kettering
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Getting Things Done

  • Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. -- Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)
  • I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do something I can do. -- Helen Keller
  • Always make the implicit explicit. Then you've got at least some chance of getting what you asked for -- Kate Carruthers
  • Remember it is always a question of problem ownership. If you cannot change it or control it then you don't own it. This makes life much simpler. -- Kate Carruthers 2001
  • Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. -- Sir Winston Churchill
  • We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. -- C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections
  • Action should culminate in wisdom. -- Bhagavad Gita
  • Quality begins on the inside... and then works its way out. -- Bob Moawad
  • The bitterness of poor quality lingers long after the sweetness of meeting schedules is forgotten. -- Kathleen Byle, Sandia National Laboratories
  • If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission. -- Admiral Grace Hopper
  • Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life. -- Anne Lamott
  • First law of Bad Management: If something isn't working, do more of it. -- Tom DeMarco
  • A fool with a tool is still a fool. -- Grady Booch
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Life - Work Balance

  • You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. -- Woodrow Wilson
  • To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. -- Joseph Addison
  • Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
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Truths?

  • Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.... -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Not all who wander are lost. -- J. R. R. Tolkien
  • We don't have to change; survival isn't mandatory. -- W. Edwards Deming
  • I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberators—they fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of? -- Barbra Streisand
  • Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- Albert Einstein
  • Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. -- James Baldwin
  • Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. -- Anon.
  • How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. -- Marcus Aurelius
  • Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. -- Putt's Law
  • Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. -- Frank Outlaw
  • If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. -- Mahatma Gandhi
  • Fight as if you are right, listen as if you are wrong! -- Karl Weick
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Self

  • Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- Eleanor Roosevelt
  • Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. -- Janis Joplin
  • As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might. -- Marian Anderson
  • Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober-minded men. -- Socrates
  • Where talent is a dwarf, self-esteem is a giant. -- J. Petit-Senn, Conceits and Caprices
  • He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened. -- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
  • Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. -- Benjamin Franklin
  • The one who cannot restrain their anger will wish undone, what their temper and irritation prompted them to do. -- Horace
  • or in modern terms: Always keep your composure. You can't score from the penalty box; and to win, you have to score. -- Bobby Hull
  • A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)
  • Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds, shining qualities beneath a rough exterior. -- Juvenal
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Willpower

  • We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are. -- Harry S Truman
  • I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. -- Martha Washington
  • I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. -- Frank Herbert, Dune, "Litany Against Fear", 1965
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Leadership

  • If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather that dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities. -- Barbara Bush
  • A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination. -- Nelson Mandela
  • Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy. -- Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
  • What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do. -- John Holt
  • The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln
  • Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. -- General George Patton Jr
  • To work in the world lovingly means that we are defining what we will be for, rather than reacting to what we are against. -- Christina Baldwin
  • In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions. -- Margaret Wheatly, Leadership and the New Science
  • The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it. -- Theodore Roosevelt
  • Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it. -- Marian Anderson
  • A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves. -- Lao-Tzu
  • Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. -- General George Patton Jr
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