Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
~ Colin Powell
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Quotes
Dreams are maps
The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
~ Carl Sagan
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Shoulders of giants
I’ve said many times of my generation that we drink deeply from wells of freedom and opportunity that we did not dig, that we eat from tables prepared for us by our ancestors, that we sit comfortably in the shade of trees that we did not cultivate. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
~ Cory Booker
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Rest. Reflect. Recalibrate.
When you’re able to recognize what’s happening and be deliberate with your actions, setbacks don’t have to be as painful. Coming out on the other side ready to recommit to your path requires that you harness all the skills you have learned and apply them to rest, reflect, recalibrate, and then get back on track.
~ Melody Wilding
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Reasons to doubt
There are always going to be reasons to doubt your own worth; The question is, how far do you allow yourself to go down that road before you look up and realize— you had the power to come home all along.
~ Sara Bareilles
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The hero within
Going inward. That’s the real work. The solutions are not outside of us. Get to know who you really are, because as you search for the hero within, you inevitably become one.
~ Emma Tiebens
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Tolerance versus love
Tolerance is becoming accustomed to injustice; love is becoming disturbed and activated by another’s adverse condition. Tolerance crosses the street; love confronts. Tolerance builds fences; love opens doors. Tolerance breeds indifference; love demands engagement. Tolerance couldn’t care less; love always cares more.
~ Cory Booker
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Power
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
~ Alice Walker
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Slide easily
There are two ways to slide easily through life: Namely, to believe everything, or to doubt everything; Both ways save us from thinking.
~ Alfred Korzybski
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Failing to consider
Failing to consider second- and third-order consequences is the cause of a lot of painfully bad decisions, and it is especially deadly when the fist inferior option confirms your own biases. Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored.
~ Ray Dalio
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Diligence, energy, patience
If you do the job in a principiled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment— If you can embrace this without fear or expectation— can find fulfillment in what you’re doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfullness (every word, every utterance)— Then your life will be happy. No one can prevent that.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Our feelings
Our feelings aren’t the problem. It’s our relationship to them.
~ Amber Rae
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I matter
That I matter, that my life demands the ceaseless attention I give it, is exactly what those genes would have any organism believeing, if that organism was evolved enough for belief. The will to survive evolves, in a higher creature like us, into the will to matter.
~ Rebecca Goldstein
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Attitude
Attitude puts apptitude on steroids. Attitude is the soft stuff, but when the chips are down, as they so often are, it’s the soft stuff that often counts.
~ Peter Guber
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The analysis part
Writing itself makes you realize where there are holes in things. I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write. And so I believe that, even though you’re an optimist, the analysis part of you kicks in when you sit down to construct a story or a paragraph or a sentence. You think, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.’ And you have to go back, and you have to rethink it all.
~ Carol Loomis
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Your mission
If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn’t plan your mission properly.
~ David Hackworth
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Anything at all
It would be wrong for anything to stand between you and attaining goodness—as a rational being and a citizen. Anything at all: the applaus of the crowd, high office, wealth, or self-indulgence. All of them might seem to be compatible with it—for a while. But suddenly they control us and sweep us away.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Personal responsibility
I took personal, public responsibility. I apologized profusely and repeatedly. I did the best I could to make things right. And most important, I relearned a lesson I thought I already knew: Never compromise your integrity. It’s all you have.
~ Strauss Zelnick
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Evict it
The great majority of that which gives you angst never happens, so you must evict it. Don’t let it live rent-free in your brain.
~ Peter Guber
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Wait to respond
I have often regretted acting impulsively when I am feeling angry or frustrated. Now, when I feel that familiar urge to respond defensively or say things I don’t really mean or bang out a wounded response via email or text, I wait. I force myself to breath, take a step back, and wait to respond. Just an hour or two or an overnight retreat makes a world of difference. And if all else fails, I try to obey this message I got in a fortune cookie: Avoid compulsively making things worse.
~ Debbie Millman
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