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Archive for the ‘quotes’ Category

Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.

Monday, March 30th, 2009

“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”
– Sir Claus Moser

Tom Peters Favorite Quotes

Sunday, March 25th, 2007

TP’s “Top 41” Quotes
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”—Eleanor Roosevelt
As year’s end approaches, one tends (well, I tend) to think a little bit philosophically. To do the accounts of the year past—and to imagine the year to come. As I began that not(for me) very systematic process, I stumbled across the Eleanor Roosevelt remark above.
And it got me thinking—the whole point. To add a little fuel to the fire I mined a few old presentations for more spurs to both reflection and forethought. What emerged, in ever so haphazard a fashion, follows. It is not a listing of “business quotes,” though 100% are applicable to business. It is not a set of “motivational quotes” (perish the thought), though most are in some sense motivational. I guess it simply is what it is … some comments that may help you, if you’re so inclined, to ruminate on where you’ve been and where you might go in 2006:

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”—Eleanor Roosevelt

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”—Helen Keller

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”—Mary Oliver

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”—James Dean

“The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful
gesture.”—Ken Langone, founder, Home Depot

“The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.”—William James

“Don’t belittle!”—OD Consultant, on the essence of a well-functioning human
community

“If you don’t listen, you don’t sell anything.”—Carolyn Marland/
MD/Guardian Group

“It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.”—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

“What creates trust, in the end, is the leader’s manifest respect for the
followers.”—Jim O’Toole, Leading Change

“If you can’t state your position in eight words or less, you don’t have a
position.”—Seth Godin

“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the
world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”—Margaret Mead

“Make your life itself a creative work of art.”—Mike Ray, The Highest Goal

“Have you invested as much this year in your career as in your car?”—Molly Sargent,
OD consultant and trainer

“The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.”—James Yorke,
mathematician, on chaos theory in The New Scientist

“Tom, what have you done this year?”—Jessica Sutherland, Director, Institute for
International Research/Middle East (TP: “Yikes!”)

**********
“To live is the rarest
thing in the world.
Most people exist,
that is all.”
—Oscar Wilde
**********
“People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be
part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust.”—Howard Schultz, Starbucks

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”—Charles Darwin

“We may not be interested in chaos but chaos is interested in us.”—Robert Cooper, The
Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-first Century

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”—General Eric
Shinseki, retired Chief of Staff, U. S. Army

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”—Gandhi

“We eat change for breakfast!”—Harry Quadracci, founder, QuadGraphics

“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”—Mario Andretti

“You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner. You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.”—Jack Welch, retired CEO, GE

“We have a ‘strategic’ plan. It’s called doing things.”—Herb Kelleher, founder,
Southwest Airlines

**********
A man approached JP Morgan, held up an envelope, and said, “Sir, in
my hand I hold a guaranteed formula for success, which I will gladly
sell you for $25,000.” “Sir,” JP Morgan replied, “I do not know what is
in the envelope, however if you show me, and I like it, I give you my
word as a gentleman that I will pay you what you ask.” The man agreed
to the terms, and handed over the envelope. JP Morgan opened it, and
extracted a single sheet of paper. He gave it one look, a mere glance,
then handed the piece of paper back to the gent. And paid him the
agreed-upon $25,000.

The Paper:
1. Every morning, write a list of the things that need to be done that
day.
2. Do them.
**********
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy
dying.”—The Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins)
4
“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”—Steve Jobs, Apple

“Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best.”—Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius

“The best thing a leader can do for a Great Group is to allow its members to discover
their greatness.”—Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, Organizing Genius

“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend
or not.”—Isabel Allende

“Nobody can prevent you from choosing to be exceptional.”—Mark Sanborn, The Fred Factor

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”—Napoleon

“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“If you’re enthusiastic about the things you’re working on, people will come ask you to do interesting things.”—James Woolsey, former CIA director

“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before
you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself
believe.”—Winston Churchill

“A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”—Chinese Proverb

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”—John Quincy Adams

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

“A year from now
you may wish you
had started today.”
—Karen Lamb

*********
Tom Peters*: Leadership is all about love:
Passion,
Enthusiasms,
Appetite for Life,
Engagement,
Great Causes & Determination to Make a Damn Difference,
Commitment to Excellence,
Shared Adventures,
Bizarre Failures,
Growth Beyond Measure,
Insatiable Appetite for Change.

*Would have been No. 42, but it does not seem appropriate to quote oneself and count it as wisdom.

Quote from the movie, What the Bleep

Monday, January 8th, 2007

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come.
– Victor Hugo

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
– Albert Einstein, in The New Convergence

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.We have guided missiles and misguided men.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
– William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
– Stephen W. Hawking

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it – always.
– Mahatma Gandhi

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
– Stephen W. Hawking

The visible world is the invisible organization of energy.
– Physicist Heinz Pagels

There is no reality in the absence of observation.
– The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

No theory of reality compatible with quantum theory can require spatially separate events to be independent.
– J.S. Bell

If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.
– Niels Bohr

Curiouser and curiouser!
– Lewis Carroll

Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
– Claude Bernard

The warrior steps forth to accept the unknown and challenge disbelief, for if it lies in mind it Is, by God!
– Ramtha

If those who lead you say to you, “See, the Kingdom is in the sky,” then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, “It is in the sea,” then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
- (All the sayings of Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a single volume for the first time. Compiled by Ricky Alan Mayotte) From The Complete Jesus. (Pg 71) Jesus

There are grounds for cautious optimism that we may now be near the end of the search for the ultimate laws of nature.
– Stephen W. Hawking

I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are impossible.
– William James

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
– Lewis Carroll

Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.
– Niels Bohr

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
– Copernicus

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
– Albert Einstein

Whoever talks about Planck’s constant and does not feel at least a little giddy obviously doesn’t appreciate what he is talking about.
– Niels Bohr (quoted by Teller: see French & Kennedy 1985, p.182)

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
– Niels Bohr

…the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source…. Here is the fountain of action and of thought…. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The power of Thought, the magic of the Mind!
– Lord Byron

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
– Niels Bohr

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mystical. It is the source of all true art and science.
– Albert Einstein

Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.
– Stephen W. Hawking

We have actually touched the Borderland where Matter and Force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between the Known and Unknown … I venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this Borderland, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie Ultimate Realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.
– Sir William Crookes, 1879

Do you remember how electrical currents and “unseen waves” were laughed at? The knowledge about man is still in its infancy.
– Albert Einstein

It gives me a deep comforting sense that ‘things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.’
– Helen Keller

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
– Oscar Wilde

You cannot see anything that you do not first contemplate as a reality.
– Ramtha

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
– William James

We feel and know that we are eternal.
– Edmund Spenser

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of being.
– Carl Jung

Time is not a line, but a series of now points.
– Taisen Deshimaru

The birth of a man is the birth of his sorrow. The longer he lives, the more stupid he becomes, because his anxiety to avoid unavoidable death becomes more and more acute. What bitterness! He lives for what is always out of reach! His thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.
– Chang-Tzu

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become-to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.
– Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Consciousness is a being, the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

The spirit down here in man and the spirit up there in the sun, in reality are only one spirit, and there is no other one.
– The Upanishads

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
– Archibald MacLeish

The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
– Aart Van Der Leeuw

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.
– H.D. Thoreau

Cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words, and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.
– Dogen

Although each of us obviously inhabits a separate physical body, the laboratory data from a hundred years of parapsychology research strongly indicate that there is no separation in consciousness.
– Russell Targ

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.
– Car

l Gustav Jung

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
– Helen Keller

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge.
– Albert Einstein

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
– Winston Churchill

The truth dazzles gradually, or else the world would be blind.
– Emily Dickinson

Everything you see has its roots in the unseen world. The forms may change, yet the essence remains the same. Every wonderful sight will vanish; every sweet word will fade, But do not be disheartened, The source they come from is eternal, growing, Branching out, giving new life and new joy. Why do you weep? The source is within you And this whole world is springing up from it.
– Jelauddin Rumi

A full-spectrum approach to human consciousness and behavior means that men and women have available to them a spectrum of knowing -a spectrum that includes, at the very least, the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of spirit.
– Ken Wilber

All speech, action, and behavior are fluctuations of consciousness. All life emerges from, and is sustained in, consciousness. The whole universe is the expression of consciousness. The reality of the universe is one unbounded ocean of consciousness in motion.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Consciousness is the basis of all life and the field of all possibilities. Its nature is to expand and unfold its full potential. The impulse to evolve is thus inherent in the very nature of life.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Knowledge is structured in consciousness. The process of education takes place in the field of consciousness; the prerequisite to complete education is therefore the full development of consciousness — enlightenment. Knowledge is not the basis of enlightenment, enlightenment is the basis of knowledge.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
– Giordano Bruno

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
– Galileo Galilei

Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
– Georg C. Lichtenberg

That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it… We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself.
– Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus

When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him… For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth.
– Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus

The universe on a very basic level could be a vast web of particles which remain in contact with one another over distance, and in no time.
– R. Nadeau and M. Kafatos

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
– Chief Seattle

The state of least excitation of consciousness is the field of all possibilities.
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

If I could take all your words away and give you but a sparse few, they would be: ‘I now know, I am absolute, I am complete, I am God, I am.’ If there were no other words but these, you would no longer be limited to this plane.
– Ramtha

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity…and I’m not sure about the universe.
– Albert Einstein

…perhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it, and having seen it, to find one in himself.
– Plato

Know thyself.
– Socrates

Reality is not only stranger than we suppose but stranger than we can suppose.
– J. B. S. Haldane

Quit thy childhood, my friend, and wake up!
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
– Albert Einstein

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate, sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth…home. My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.
– Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and founder, Institute of Noetic Sciences

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
– Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning Father of Quantum Theory

Mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our understanding.
– Freeman Dyson

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce, Ulysses

I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
– Albert Einstein

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend upon the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
– Albert Einstein

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
– Albert Einstein

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don’t want.
– Marianne Williamson

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
– Albert Einstein

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
– Galileo Galilei

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.
– Confucius

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it i

s.
– Winston Churchill

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.
– John Maynard Keynes

We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
– T. S. Eliot

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
– Democritus of Abdera

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
– George Bernard Shaw

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters to what lies within us.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we are looking for is what is looking.
– St. Francis of Assisi

Quotes from the movie, The Secret

Monday, January 8th, 2007

Here are those life changing inspirational quotes from the The Secret

“The secret is the answer to all that has been all this is and all that will be” – Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

“You create your own universe as you go along” – Winston Churchill 1874-1965

“Take the first step in faith you don’t have to see the whole staircase just take the first step” – Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” – Buddha

“Whatever we think about and thank about we bring about.” – John Demartini

“What power this is I cannot say. All that I know is that it exists.” – Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein 1879-1955

“What you resist persists.” – Carl Jung 1875-1961

“All power is from within and is therefore under our control” – Robert Collier 1885-1950

“Whether you think you can or can’t either way you are right.” – Henry Ford 1863-1947

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” – Joseph Campbell 1904-1987

Our Deepest Fear

Monday, January 8th, 2007

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Service vs. hospitality

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

Service is delivering on your promise. Hospitality is making people feel good while you’re delivering on that promise.

Danny Meyer

Quote of the month…

Monday, November 20th, 2006

“There are alot of things to think about, but nothing to worry about.”

Matt Koepke

Whole + complete

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006

“Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.”

~Wayne Dyer~

Articles with Great Quotes (my quotes or articles)

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

LookSmart’s FindArticles – Power tools: whether you own a business or work for one, these gadgets, guidebooks and gurus can take you to the top

Essence, June, 2006, by Wendy Wilson

Books about selling can help newcomers, veterans in sales

THE JOURNAL NEWS, March 2006, by BARBARA WOLLER

Organize-U Highlights Aaron Bare

Organize-U, March 2004

SWOT Team: Asks Will CAN-SPAM Make List Brokers Obsolete?

Marketing Prof, 2003

Other articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Readers Digest, Power Broker Magazine, Selling Power, and Sales and Marketing Management.

Quotes by van der Hayden

Monday, October 9th, 2006

“When the will comes in conflict with the imagination, the imagination invariable carries the day.”- Emile Coue

“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the entire earth”- Archimedes (C. 287 – 212 B.C.)

“Most people’s lives are a direct reflection of their peer groups”- Anthony Robbins

“No man becomes rich unless he enriches others”- Andrew Carnegie

These are quotes provided by Robert van der Hayden, a world class designer, collaborator and friend. When he shares his portfolio of uniqueness with me, I will share it with you.