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.
slip:4a661.
Quotes
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
slip:4a660.
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
slip:4a659.
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
slip:4a655.
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.
slip:4a656.
Calm seas
Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.
~ Publilius Syrus
slip:4a654.
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
slip:4a653.
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
slip:4a650.
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.
slip:4a651.
Places and systems
In this moment, we need to be reminded that stories of the future—about AI, or any kind—are never just about technology; They are about people and they are about the places that those people find themselves, the places they might call home and systems that bind them all together.
~ Genevieve Bell
slip:4a648.
Successful
If you want to be successful in business, (in life, actually,) you have to create more than you consume. Your goal should be to create value for everyone you interact with. Any business that doesn’t create value for those it touches, even if it appears successful on the surface, isn’t long for this world. It’s on the way out.
~ Jeff Bezos
slip:4a649.
Provided you cooperate
What the pupil must learn, if he learns anything at all, is that the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.
~ Joseph Tussman
slip:4a647.
Privilege of working hard
Take time to discover what you would prefer above all else to make your life work. You may have to do a lot of temporary jobs before you reach the one your ambition places above all others. But if your idea is clear and your determination firm, you will surely reach it. Remember that is it often necessary in life to learn to work hard at many things before you arrive at the very great privilege of working hard at the one thing you prize the most.
~ James Cash Penney
slip:4a645.
Human progress
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable […] Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
slip:4a646.
Mountains are entities
Mountains are entities; you get to climb them, but you can’t conquer them. Put your arrogance aside. You can never beat a mountain into submission. If I summit it’s because I was in the right place at the right time.
~ Ed Viesturs
slip:4a644.
Five things
The more you resist something, the more you make out of it. Everybody has their five things that they’re quietly resisting doing and a good day for them is when none of those resistances come and directly confront them.
~ Robert Downey Jr.
slip:4a643.
Influence
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: We are interested in what we want. So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
~ Dale Carnegie
slip:4a642.
Solid thinking
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
~ Marin Luther King Jr.
slip:4a641.
Apt to escape
I had, also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; For I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.
~ Charles Darwin
slip:4a640.
Happiness
Wealth is not happiness nor is swimming pools and villas. Nor is great work alone reward, or fame. Foreign places visited themselves give nothing. It is only you who bring to the places your heart, or in your great work feeling, or in your large house place. If you do this there is happiness.
~ Richard Feynman
slip:4a639