The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Quotes
A long long time ago I began collecting inspirational quotes and aphorisms which became my collection of quotes.
In the end
Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of it is left, but this too: If we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and human knowledge? If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing, go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But getting the most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you need a healthy mind for… all those are gone.
So we need to hurry.
Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Excellence
Most see excellences as some grand aspiration. Wrong. Dead wrong. My two cents: Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It’s the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It’s the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!
~ Tom Peters
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Forethought
Forethought is a virtue; remember that one day, that distant future will be now, and the choices you make today will have shaped the choices you are able to make then.
~ Tim O’Reilly
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Macro versus micro
This is super important. Everybody’s impatient at a macro [level], and just so patient at a micro [level], wasting your days worrying about years. I’m not worried about my years, because I’m squeezing [everything] out of my seconds, let alone my days. It’s going to work out.
~ Gary Vaynerchuk
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Justice
It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.
[…]
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Leadership
And in the end, cynicism is a lousy strategy. Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership. Leadership comes when your hope and your optimism are matched with a concrete vision of the future and a way to get there. People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going.
~ Seth Godin
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Identity
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
~ Charles Bukowski
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Understanding
The speed with which all of them vanish—the objects in the world, and the memory of them in time. And the real nature of the things our senses experience, especially those that entice us with pleasure or frighten us with pain or are loudly trumpeted by pride. To understand those things—how stupid, contemptible, grimy, decaying, and dead they are—that’s what our intellectual powers are for.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Leadership
The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.
~ Seth Godin
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Truth
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
~ Frederick Douglass
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Challenge
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Prudence
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
~ Niccolò Machiavelli
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Concentrate
Concentrate every minute … on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Reflection. Imitation. Experience.
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; And third, by experience, which is bitterest.
~ Confucius
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Hate
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Calm seas
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.
~ Publilius Syrus
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Favorable conditions
We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
~ C.S. Lewis
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With imagination
My father knew that if I was compelled to clothe myself it would make me think and search and find ways of earning the money to do it. And furthermore he knew that I would learn this important fact: We do not meet the demands of life with money. But with the imagination, forethought, plans and energy that earn the money.
~ James Cash Penney
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Communication
People fail to get along because they fear each other; They fear each other because they don’t know each other; They don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
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