Quotes - 2019

I begin every year by reviewing a collection of quotes I've gathered over time consisting of Authors, Philosophers, Comedians, Chefs, Directors, Athletes, Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Politicians, Religious figures, Playwrights, Scientists, Artists and more. Every year I add some new ones and remove ones that don't resonate with my anymore.

It used to take me a few days to read these but now it takes me a few weeks to go over them, process them and think about the values and ideas behind each one, They serve as good reminders of who I am but also who I can be. I don't expect this collection to speak to all of you but I hope there are some in here that will inspire you to learn more about these individuals or at least the story behind the words. Enjoy.

"You must treasure the foundations laid by tradition. Incorporating modern technology into traditional techniques helps bring out the true value."
- Yuji Nagatani, Crafted

"Everything in life is really simple. We are the ones who choose to make things complicated. Things don’t change. People don’t change. The only thing we can change, is ourselves. And by changing ourselves, we become a solution and while we work towards solving the problem, things change. We change. It’s really that simple."
- Mona Nomura, Better Humans

"A person who cannot genuinely empathize with others can never excel as a leader. So much of what ails society today is the result of too many people in leadership positions who do not or cannot identify with the plight of their fellow men and women."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Belief and seeing are both often wrong"
- Robert McNamara

Prioritize
Ask smarter questions
Make data-driven decisions
Divorce your ego
Frame the problem
Get perspective on the problem
Model the problem
Think of the system and the ecosystem
Think of the problem over time
Think strategically
- Bill Gates

"Leaders are not what many people think – people with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see whether anyone is following them. 'Leadership qualities' are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. This includes, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, determination, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head even when things are going badly. This is the opposite of the “charisma” that we hear so much about"
- John Holt

“To be an artist is to believe in life.”
- Henry Moore

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow"
- Abraham Lincoln

"When we care for others our own strength to live increases. When we help people expand their state of life, our lives also expand. Actions to benefit others are not separate from actions to benefit oneself. Our lives and the lives of others are ultimately inseparable. "
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Yo tampoco se como vivir...estoy improvisando" (I don't know how to live...I'm improvising it.)
- Accion Poetica Escobar

"At the heart of the engineering approach is a separation of design and construction."
- Martin Fowler

"Collect Experiences, Not Things. Your experience is everything. Your lessons, mistakes, highs and lows, they all make up who you are."
- Unknown

“Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
- Bruce Lee

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
- Martha Graham

"It is this time and this place that matter — not some other time or place. What matters is here and now — the people here and now."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"It is important to focus on what can be done and how the problem can be solved with the available resources."
- Ken Schwaber

"Discipline includes scoring systems for making good decisions. Your actions begin with your decisions, so a core discipline should include processes for consistently making good decisions. Scoring systems like the one you should use to determine your definition of success can work in all sorts of other areas of life, including your decision making."
-  Mark Sanborn
 
“I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. ”
- Pablo Picasso

"Do. Or do Not. There is no Try"
- Yoda

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone"
- Neale Donald Walsch

"Two things define you. Your patience when you have nothing, and your attitude when you have everything."
- Unknown

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you're interested in something, you do it only when it's convenient. When you're committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.”
- Kenneth H. Blanchard

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Nothing will work unless you do"
- Maya Angelou

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
- Confucius

“When I was a young man, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.”
- George Bernard Shaw

"A team self-organizes to draw on its strengths rather than succumb to its problems...Management is primarily responsible for doing anything possible to increase team productivity and then adapting to the results"
- Ken Schwaber

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
- Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun."
- Mary Lou Cook

“We rise by lifting others"
- Robert Ingersoll

"Dialogue starts from the courageous willingness to know and be known by others. It is the painstaking and persistent effort to remove all obstacles that obscure our common humanity."
- Daisaku Ikeda

Set goals. Articulate the problem and give your audience a specific challenge or clarity around the end goal. Framing the questions is vital to success.
Practice cross-fertilization. Executive sponsorship is important at the onset to gather crowds, but don’t limit participants to a single area of expertise or department within a business. Bringing together different thinkers results in bigger, better ideas.
Make it fun. There needs to be a social recognition and a game quality to make what is ultimately a problem-solving task attractive to participants. Integrate game mechanics and voting, or prizes to motivate the crowd.
Be committed. Be prepared for a continuous feedback loop – to provide an answer, take action or just simply acknowledge the crowds contributions.
Allocate back-end resources. On the front-end, things like communication and motivation are critical. Once the ideas start rolling in, there needs to be curation and filtering, along with plans to put the contributions into action.
- Courtney Boyd Myers

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
- Ernest Hemingway

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear"
- Jack Canfield

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race"
- James Joyce

"No matter how wonderful our dreams, how noble our ideals, or how high our hopes, ultimately we need courage to make them a reality. Without action, it’s as if they never existed. "
- Daisaku Ikeda

"We need to be in the open mode when pondering a problem — but! — once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we’ve made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness."
- John Cleese

1. Always be creating.
2. Make your own inspiration.
3. If you don’t know something, explore.
4. Be adventurous.
5. Take breaks.
6. Work even when others aren’t.
7. Share what you learn.
8. Ignore the critics.
9. Don’t wait, start now.
- Tanner Christensen, Rules of a Creator's Life

"We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams,"
- Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Ode

"If you believe in your work... Eventually you will find your audience... an artist gets the audience he or she deserves."
- Bernie Sahlins

"Winning isn't everything but making the effort to win is."
- Vince Lombardi

"To be fearless no matter what happens—that is the root of true happiness. To move forward resolutely regardless of what lies in store—that is the spirit, the resolve, that leads to human victory."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"One of the best ways to tap collective smarts is to set great goals and let diverse solutions emerge  -- to be big on the what and small on the how. "
- Eric Liu

1. Don't see. Do.
2. Do something unusual.
3. Embark on a worthless mission.
4. Embrace a cause.
5. Let other people spread the word.
6. Get over yourself.
- Jeff Haden

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
- Timothy Leary

"I'm so far from perfect, I make mistakes daily. My goal is to share that lesson, in hopes of saving the next persons time. I don't Live or Love Perfectly, I Just Operate Genuinely. Everything about me is flawed and that's what makes me authentic. I am proud of my scars, they are evidence that I'm healed. What others think of me is none of my business, it's theirs. I have confidence in myself and know my job is to be the best person and parent I can be, even when no one is looking."
- Jess Romero

"Failure is an instrumental part of every success. Whether our life has been a triumph or tragedy can only be judged at its very end. "
-Daisaku Ikeda

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.”
- Kent M. Keith

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
- Scott Adams

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
- E. E. Cummings

"Everything passes. Both soaring joys and crushing sorrows fade away like a dream. However, the knowledge of having lived one’s life to the fullest never disappears."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult"
- Proverbs 12:16

"No one can make you feel bad without your permission"
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
- Gilda Radner

"If opportunity isn't knocking ... build a door"
- Milton Berle

"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."
- Thomas Watson

"Information is different from knowledge, and it has nothing at all to do with wisdom"
- Wendell Berry

"Established truths are comforting, but it is the mysteries of science that make the soul ache and render a life of exploration worth living"
- Brian Greene

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes

"Our hopes, desires and ambitions are powerful forces existing within us for the shaping of the future. They are the generating forces that create the future. To lose hope or give up one’s goals because of the setbacks of the moment is to diminish one’s own life potential. Hopes, dreams, faith and sense of mission enable us to open up our lives."
-  Daisaku Ikeda

"You're only given one little spark of madness. If you lose that, you're nothin'."
- Robin Williams

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are."
- Kurt Cobain

"Life is beautiful, as long as it consumes you. When it is rushing through you, destroying you, life is gorgeous, glorious. It’s when you burn a slow fire and save fuel, that life’s not worth having."
- D H Lawrence

"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."
- Babe Ruth

"If you only do what you can do, you'll never be better than what you are."
- Shifu, Kung-Fu Panda 3

“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”
- Dorothy Day

"To the extent that we contemplate ourselves and elevate our state of life, we can deepen our understanding of others. Someone who does so is capable of recognizing and treasuring people's individuality. A person of wisdom tries to invigorate others and bring out the best in them."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"For me, the main meal is doing, not just seeing. It's about following your own interests on the road."
- Doug Lansky

"Humility before Honor"
- Proverbs 15:33

"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."
- Anthony Bourdain

"Do all the good you can and make as little fuss about it as possible."
- Charles Dickens

"I enjoy life because I am endlessly interested in people and their growth. My interest leads me to widen my knowledge of people, and this in turn compels me to believe in the common goodness of mankind. I believe that the normal human heart is born good. That is, it’s born sensitive and feeling, eager to be approved and to approve, hungry for simple happiness and the chance to live. It neither wishes to be killed, nor to kill. If through circumstances, it is overcome by evil, it never becomes entirely evil. There remain in it elements of good, however recessive, which continue to hold the possibility of restoration."
- Pearl Buck

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”
- A. Einstein

"There’s no destination. There’s no getting anywhere. There’s just the going. The key to life is to make the going really fun."
- Patton Oswalt

"As long as we are human, we are bound to make mistakes. What distinguishes a forward-looking person from an intransigent one, a virtuous person from a dishonest one, however, is whether one can candidly admit to one’s mistakes and take bold steps to redress them."  
- Daisaku Ikeda

“The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
- Christopher McCandless

"I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."
- Steve Jobs, 2005, Stanford Commencement Speech

"I believe in the brotherhood of all men, but I don't believe in wasting brotherhood on anyone who doesn't want to practice it with me. Brotherhood is a two-way street."
- Malcolm X

"Do not wait until your retirement before you live your dreams."
- S. Alpert

"The two wheels that carry dialogue forward are a belief that everyone possesses goodness within, and a spirit of unflagging determination to tap and draw out that goodness."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
- Guatama Buddha

"If we think of training and coaching as the anvil that the hammer of time and effort beats us against to shape us, the hammering would be useless without the fire of failure to heat us to the point that we can be molded into a success."
- Paul McCord

"Never has there been a more exciting time for all of us to explore this great next frontier where boundaries between work and purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business."
- Richard Branson

"I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”
- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect the dots looking backward."
- Steve Jobs

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Make an effort to meet with people. Interaction with others opens up new and exciting possibilities. Meeting people stimulates our minds, gives us energy, leads to more new encounters and infinitely expands our life and our world. "
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous, teach me to serve you as I should, to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labour and ask not for reward, save that of knowing that I do your most holy will."
- St. Ignatius Loyola

"The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust."
- Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
- T. S. Elliot

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
- Mahatma Gandhi

“You Are The Universe, Expressing Itself As A Human For A Little While.”
- Eckhart Tolle

"Simply be who you are, do what you do best, be where you are called by joy, and let life work its magic on your behalf."
- Alan Cohen

"Let go or be dragged."
- Zen Proverb

"The discovery of commonalities bridges the distance between people’s hearts. Seclusion invariably dims the inner radiance of both individuals and societies. It is the spirit of mutual respect and the willingness to learn from others that bonds hearts together. In the words of a wise person, when you bow respectfully to the mirror, the image in the mirror likewise bows to you."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
- Herman Melville

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."
- John W. Holt, Jr.

"The greater my aspirations ... the more I create ... the higher the standards I set ... the more opportunity is created for exceptional people to participate, express their greatness in the form of ideas, innovation and service. Why would I ever feel it necessary to apologize for ambition."
- David Pickard Wyllie

"Remember, don't sit around feeling sorry for yourself. Because no one gives a fuck."
- Ricky Gervais

"When you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done."
- Unknown

"It is much more valuable to look for the strengths in others — you gain nothing by criticizing people’s imperfections."
- Daisaku Ikeda

“When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God’s light shines upon you.”
- Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

"It's never too late to become what you might have been."
- George Eliot

“Happiness is only real when shared.”
- Christopher McCandless

"If you can dream it you can do it"
- Walt Disney

"One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield"
- Guatama Buddha

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "
- Teddy Roosevelt

"There's always, even when everything's going wrong, there's some silver lining in there. There's some piece of data that you could take, there's some lesson that you can learn that if you apply it, could lead to success down the road."
- Jeremy Stoppelman

"Happiness doesn’t exist on the far side of distant mountains. It is within you, yourself. Not you, however, sitting in idle passivity. It is to be found in the vibrant dynamism of your own life as you struggle to challenge and overcome one obstacle after another, as you clamber up a perilous ridge in pursuit of that which lies beyond."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"If you do not enjoy what you are doing, you will never be good at it."
- Luke Parker

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up."
- Vince Lombardi

"People without hope won't take action. If you want to help someone, give them hope."
-Tom Ziglar

"Laugh and grow strong"
- St. Ignatius of Loyola

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
- Ayn Rand

To be constantly told “it won’t work” but to keep plugging away anyways.
To be kicked a lot and still keep standing.
To hide your demons so that you don’t scare the bejesus out of your employees.
To inspire others to join your cause when by all rational accounts they should not.
And having the cojones to have them join you anyways. Pottery Barn rule. You hire them, you own them now. As in your responsible for these lines on their future resume. Don’t fuck them up.
To swallow your stresses and insecurities and keep your optimistic game face on in the office. And on your home front. Maybe even try to believe it in your own head.
- Mark Suster

"Life is filled with potential that is truly unfathomable. At last we are coming to see the enormous power it possesses. That is why we must never write anyone off. In particular, we mustn’t put boundaries on our own potential. In most cases, our so-called limitations are nothing more than our own decision to limit ourselves."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player. Losing yourself in the group, for the good of the group, that’s teamwork."
- John Wooden

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”
- Napoleon Hill

"We say yes because we understand that to do so is the practical way of sending a message to the intuition that every creative idea will be valued, respected, and used; and when the intuition gets that message often enough, it will send us its most perfect and its most pure creative ideas. That is why, whether we like it or not, saying yes to everything is the most creative technique an artist can employ. ..... If we can persuade all the individuals in this collaborative art to work within the same system, that is, the system of respect for the intuition - the system of positation- the collective unconscious flourishes. Everyone's ideas will be vibrant and appropriate. Success will be inevitable."
- William Ball, A Sense of Direction

“I have a desire to tell stories. And I’m never quite satisfied.”
-Martin Scorsese

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.”
- Michael Pritchard

"Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium."
- Henry Rollins

"Defeat lies not in failing or making mistakes; rather, it lies in giving up on ourselves when we do so."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Identify talented people around you and then instead of going into competition with them, or trying to wipe them out, make alliances, make creative friendships that allow you and your friends to grow together, because someday your friend is going to be sitting across a desk from you running a movie studio."
- Harold Ramis

“The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it.”
- Thomas Dubay

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
- Ansel Adams

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
- Michelangelo

"Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady in the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein."
- Frederick Buechner

"When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves."
- Viktor E. Frankl

"Effort and hard work construct the bridge that connects your dreams to reality. Those who make steady efforts are full of hope. And hope, in turn, arises from steady efforts. Embrace your dreams and advance as far as they can take you."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So...get on your way!"
- Dr. Seuss

"You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note"
- Doug Floyd

"Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it"
- Jules Renard

"The arts are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

"My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain."
- Charlie Chaplin

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
- Joseph Campbell

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind"
- Dr. Seuss

"Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds"
- Albert Einstein

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible"
- Walt Disney

"The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire"
- Oprah Winfrey

"What should I be but just what I am?"
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Life is short, Live it up"
- Nikita Khrushchev

"Each time you fall down, just get back up. If you can pick yourself up, you can also move forward. "
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination"
- John Lennon

"Life is a ticket to the greatest show on Earth"
- Martin H. Fischer

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere"
- Albert Einstein

“Follow the fear.”
- Del Close

“Do one thing everyday that scares you.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”
- Pablo Picasso

"The courage not to bow to pressure, the courage to stand alone, the courage to maintain one’s determination, the courage to look deep into one’s heart and confront one’s own cowardice and arrogance, the courage to challenge difficulties—those who possess this kind of courage are true victors."
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake"
- John Cleese

"The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can."
- Neil Gaiman

"And the more we try to understand one another, the more exceptional each of us will be."
- Officer Judy Hopps, Zootopia

"Without dialogue, humans are fated to walk in the darkness of their own dogmatic self-righteousness. Dialogue is the lamp by which we dispel that darkness, lighting and making visible for each other our steps and the path ahead."
- Diasaku Ikeda

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
- Gandhi

"If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!"
- Richard Branson

"Everything starts as somebody's daydream"
- Larry Niven

"Style...is knowing who you are..."
- Gore Vidal

"Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.”
- Noël Coward

"It is not how you compare to others that is important, but rather how you compare to who you were yesterday. If you’ve advanced even one step, then you’ve achieved something great. "
- Daisaku Ikeda

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."
- Stephen Covey

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

"I'll play it first and tell you what it is later."
- Miles Davis

Look people in the eye when you meet them.
Smile.
Don’t check your texts or email when someone else is talking.
Be curious.
Try to eliminate the word ‘no’ from your vocabulary for just one day.
When you are wrong, acknowledge it, say you’re sorry and move on.
Forgive yourself and forgive others.
Lead as you would want to be led.
Be on time.
Excel at preparation.
Ask yourself, what is the problem you are trying to solve.
Make your partner look good.
Respect, don’t revere.
Listen to the whole person.
Read the room.
Share the conversation.
Love your work.
Applaud others.
Say ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ whenever possible.
Consider that you might not be right.
Open your door.
Try not to work out of fear; work from a sense of possibility.
Understand the audience you’re trying to win over, and give them a role.
Be an improviser.
- Second City

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
- Attributed to Mark Twain

“Social living cannot be maintained on the basis of destructive ideologies – domination, hate, prejudice, greed and dishonesty. A society cannot hold together without a good way of life for all….Virtues are dynamic products and cannot be taken over fully developed without being continuously developed…Play involves social values, as does no other behavior. The spirit of play develops social adaptability, ethics, mental and emotional control, and imagination."
- Neva Boyd

“Give, even if you only have a little.”
- The Buddha

“Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
- Romans 13:10

"All Children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he [she] grows up."
- Pablo Picasso

"Creativity is an attitude, a way of looking at something, a way of questioning, perhaps a way of life it may be found on paths we have not yet traveled. Creativity is curiosity, joy, and communion. It is process-transformation-process."
- Viola Spolin

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
– Seneca

“Anything can be beautiful”
- Marcel Duchamp

“If you have the ability, you have the responsibility”
- Various

“Only those who see their unity with all, truly see.”
- Brita Gill-Austern

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