2099 Quotations Found

Someone defined horse sense as the good judgment horses have that prevents them from betting on people. But we have to bet on people — and I place my bets more often on high motivation than on any other quality except judgment. There is no perfection of techniques that will substitute for the lift of spirit and heightened performance that comes from strong motivation. The … [ Read more ]

Author: John Gardner | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Business, Life & Society, Motivation, Psychology | Behavior

It’s interesting that even in the first year of life you learn the impact that a variety of others have on you, but as late as middle age many people have a very imperfect understanding of the impact they themselves have on others.

Author: John Gardner | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask “What is it trying to teach me?” The lessons aren’t always happy ones, but they keep coming. It isn’t a bad idea to pause occasionally for an inward look. By midlife, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.

Author: John Gardner | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement

I said in my book, “Self-Renewal,” that we build our own prisons and serve as our own jail-keepers. I no longer completely agree with that. I still think we’re our own jailkeepers, but I’ve concluded that our parents and the society at large have a hand in building our prisons. They create roles for us — and self-images — that hold us captive for a … [ Read more ]

Author: John Gardner | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.

Author: Albert Einstein | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Wisdom

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the purse is mightier than the pen.

Author: George Monbiot | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Literature | Arts

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Author: Steven Weinberg | Subject: Religion

Life is made up of patterns. Patterns of eating, thirst, sleep, and fight-or-flight are crucial to our individual survival; patterns of courtship, sex, attachment, conflict, play, creativity, family life, and collaboration are crucial to our collective survival. Wisdom is our ability to perceive these patterns and to shape them into coherent chapters within the longer narrative of our lives.

Author: Dacher Keltner | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Wisdom

We rise in power and make a difference in the world due to what is best about human nature, but we fall from power due to what is worst.

Author: Dacher Keltner | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either one.

Author: Marshall McLuhan | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Games

If we don’t feel grateful for what we already have, what makes us think we’d be happy with more?

Author: Unknown | Subjects: Gratitude, Personal Improvement

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.

Author: Blaine Lee | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement

The men […] people admire the most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

Author: H.L. Mencken | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

Author: H. Jackson Brown, Jr. | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

Two of the greatest gifts we can give our children are roots and wings.

Author: Hodding Carter | Subjects: Family & Friends, Life & Society, Personal Improvement

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Author: Naguib Mahfouz | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Personal Improvement, Wisdom

One of the enemies of sound, lifelong motivation is a rather childish conception we have of the kind of concrete, describable goal toward which all of our efforts drive us. We want to believe that there is a point at which we can feel that we have arrived. We want a scoring system that tells us when we’ve piled up enough points to count ourselves … [ Read more ]

Author: John Gardner | Source: Farnam Street | Subjects: Motivation, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.

Author: Muhammad Ali | Subjects: Action | Accomplishment, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now at this very moment—of all external events. That’s all you need.

Author: Marcus Aurelius | Subject: Personal Improvement

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice, a structure, which produces beggars, needs restructuring.

Author: Martin Luther King Jr. | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy