Don’t be afraid to take a big step. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that you are working for someone else.

If you’re still talking about what you did yesterday, you haven’t done much today.

If you want to be the best, you have to do things that other people aren't willing to do.

Listen to the mustn'ts child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts,
The impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
Then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.

I hate writing, I love having written.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

People seldom become famous for what they say until after they are famous for what they have done.

To have lived well, laughed often and loved much;
to have gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children;
to have filled a niche and accomplished a task;
to have left the world better – whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul;
to have appreciated earth’s beauty and not failed to express it;
to have looked for the best in others, and to have given the best of yourself.
That is achievement.

The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1) Write down the problem.
2) Think very hard.
3) Write down the solution.

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

When you react, you let others control you. When you respond, you are in control.

There is nothing wrong with having butterflies; the challenge is teaching them to fly in formation.

A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure.

A single fact will often spoil an interesting argument.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

The first man to raise a fist is the man who’s run out of ideas.

People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

Too often, we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Today, even a blank sheet of paper is in danger of being considered a work of art.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once s/he grows up.

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.

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.

Live life the second time around as if you got it wrong the first time.

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters - one represents DANGER, and the other represents OPPORTUNITY.

One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, "What if I had never seen this before?" or "What if I knew I would never see it again?".

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.

An entrepreneur is the kind of person who will work 16 hours a day just to avoid having to work 8 hours a day for someone else.

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

The longer you're a teacher, the less you remember what it is like to be a student.
The longer you're a doctor, the less you remember what it is like to be a patient.
The longer you're a coach, the less you remember what it is like to be a player.
Change positions. A new perspective can improve your old methods.

To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth'.

Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities - to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.

People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can't.

I think it would be a good idea.

Character is like the foundation to a house... it is below the surface.

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us, but those who win battles we know nothing about.

It’s better to be seen for who you are and be alone, than to be accepted for someone you are not and be lonely.

How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

Just be yourself. Unless you're a jerk. Then be someone else.

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny...it is the light that guides your way.

Character is revealed by what you do when no one is noticing.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (Untrue in one thing, untrue in everything).

Raise your words, not your voice. It is the rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values..

Confidence is the memory of success.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition. But the problem with it is we see it in other people, and we don’t see it in ourselves. The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.

One finger can’t lift a pebble.

One hand cannot applaud.

Even a sheet of paper is lighter when two people lift it.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

Politeness is the poison of collaboration.

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

It is amazing how much work can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.

None of us is as smart as all of us.

Courage is being afraid, but going on anyhow.

The hero is no braver than the ordinary man, he is just brave five minutes longer.

Bravery is being the only one who knows you are afraid.

When you’re going through Hell, keep going.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.

One man with courage is a majority.

Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did.

All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you. Grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.

Only the most foolish of mice would hide in a cat’s ear. But only the wisest of cats would think to look there.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal.

If a man’s only tool is a key, he will imagine every problem is a lock.

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

Greatness and Madness are next door neighbors and they borrow each other's sugar.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

Poetry and hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

Tact: Ability to tell a man he's open-minded when he has a hole in his head.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all. Everyone makes design decisions all the time without realizing it–like Moliere’s M. Jourdain who discovered he had been speaking prose all his life–and good design is simply the result of making these decisions consciously, at the right stage, and in consultation with others as the need arises.

To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.

When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, so everybody can like it when the other make it after you.

To design is to plan, to order, to relate, and to control. In short, it opposes all means of disorder and accident.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.

A picture is worth a thousand words, unless of course, you’re talking about a picture of a thousand words.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a prototype is worth a thousand meetings.

It is the loose ends on which men hang themselves.

A good designer can organise chaos. A great designer can eliminate chaos.

Diagnose with data. Treat with design.

The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination.

I outlawed the word ‘consumer’ in all company meetings, and insisted it be replaced by the words ‘my friend,’ ‘my wife, ‘my daughter,’ ‘my mother,’ or ‘myself.’ It doesn’t sound the same at all, if you say: ‘It doesn’t matter, it’s shit, but the consumers will make do with it,’ or if you start over again and say, ‘It’s shit, but it doesn’t matter, my daughter will make do with it.’ All of a sudden, you can’t get away with it anymore. There is an enormous task to be done with this kind of symbolic repositioning.” We ARE designing for people by creating great “things” to help them … not great products that they buy! and I found this grounded people in persona work.

Design is only obvious in retrospective.

A picture is worth a thousand words and that's the problem!

For any given thousand words, it's hard to come up with a picture.

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it will take longer to download.

Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

Don't make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don't hesitate to make it beautiful.

Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible.

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

Findability precedes usability. In the alphabet and on the Web. You can’t use what you can’t find.

We see what we look for, not what we look at.

Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one. Observe that there’s no relationship to art.

If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.

If you don’t hire engineers, you are not going to get code. If you don’t hire designers, you are STILL going to get design…it is just likely going to suck.

Complexity is the problem; Ease of use is the solution; Productivity is the impact.

To dismiss basic contexts such as link colours, page layouts, navigation systems, and visual hierarchy as "boring" or "pedestrian" is akin to laughing at a car's steering wheel as unimaginative.

The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.

If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it.

No system is so foolproof that it can't be brought to its knees by a well-intentioned novice.

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledgehammer on the construction site.

You can design for all of the people some of the time. You can design for some of the people all of the time. But you can't design for all of the people all of the time.

Design is neither form alone nor function alone, but the aesthetic synthesis of the two.

The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an elegant solution, we refer to something that reduces the complex to the simple.

When one part does the work of two, the elegance of the solution is always enhanced.

If you can't explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough.

What is simple should be treated simply. What is difficult should be reduced to the simplest terms.

Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.

When all else fails, standardize.

Lurking behind chartjunk is contempt both for information and for the audience. Chartjunk promoters imagine that numbers and details are boring, dull, and tedious, requiring ornament to enliven. Cosmetic decoration, which frequently distorts the data, will never salvage an underlying lack of content. If the numbers are boring, than you’ve got the wrong numbers.

The nice thing about standards is that we have so many to choose from.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

For every problem, there is one solution that is simple, neat and wrong.

The details are not the details. They make the design.

To err is human, to forgive design.

To err is human, to avert, design.

Pardon the length of this letter. I didn’t have the time to write a short one.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.

Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.

Designing to requirements and walking on water are easy if both are frozen.

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

The only thing more expensive than hiring a professional, is hiring an amateur.

You'll never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision.

There is no perfect design. Accommodating one constraint well can often lead to conflict with others. For example, the lightest material may not be the strongest, or the most efficient shape may not be the safest or the most aesthetically pleasing.

Easy is hard.

In design, sometimes one plus one equals three.

Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose a meaningful order to chaos.

Every now and then go away...go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.

You have to admire the Wetnaps interface; instructions that say ‘tear open and use’.

If you are not sure where you are going, any road will take you there.

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.

You know when you are on the right road because it’s all uphill.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

Common sense is not so common.

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions...but with the future of present decisions.

To find many things, look for one thing.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

If a million people say or do a stupid thing, it still remains a stupid thing.

Wherever you go, there you are.

A shortcut is often the quickest way to someplace you weren’t going.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

Predictions are hard...especially when they are about the future.

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction. One has to go abroad in order to find the home one has lost.

We shall not cease from exploration.
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.

Kids are always the only future the human race has.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Tell me, I’ll forget,
Show me, I may remember.
But involve me,
and I will understand.

The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.

Computers are useless. They only give you answers.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Education is very admirable, but let us not forget that anything worth knowing cannot be taught.

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.

A school is just a building with four walls and a roof with tomorrow inside.

Specialization is getting to know more and more about less and less until we know everything about nothing.

A child who cannot learn is like a person who, upon throwing a stone to the ground, misses.

When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men and women is but knowledge in the making.

No one has yet to program a computer to be of two minds about a hard problem or to burst out laughing.

To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching.

Children stand more in need of example than criticism.

Some teachers believe their job is to teach children everything they know. In today’s world, however, that is not enough. Children must be taught to learn more than what their teachers know.

Universities are full of knowledge; the freshmen bring a little in and the seniors take none away, and knowledge accumulates.

It is good for an uneducated man to read a book of quotations.

A teacher is better than two books.

A book is a present you can open again and again.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

There are three ways to teach a child. The first is by example. The second is by example. The third is by example.

People who can read...should!

I don’t give a damn for any man who can spell a word only one way!

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Always try to phrase things in the positive rather than the negative. Telling one to ‘Stay loose’ is much more effective than saying, ‘Don’t tighten up!’ Need more proof? When I say, ‘Don’t think of a pink elephant with blue shoes on’, what is the first thing to go through your mind?

To teach is to learn twice over.

A school isn’t just a building; it’s a bank in which we deposit our children and withdraw our future.

If you’ve told a child a thousand times, and the child still has not learned, then it is not the child who is the slow learner.

The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.

Teachers affect eternity; they can never tell where their influence stops.

Two mice sat in their hole, watching Cat lurk outside. “I know how to make Cat go away,” said the first mouse. “How?” the second mouse asked in surprise. “Watch! Woof, woof!!!” barked the first mouse. Peering through their hole in the wall, they saw Cat running away in fear. “Ah, see the benefit of knowing another language!”

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other people’s writings, so you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.

Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading.

The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is that we may listen more and talk less.

If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, is there anyone who knows so much as to be out of danger?

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively, but says nothing.

The following is a metaphoric interpretation of the grading scale:
A Excellent; Walks on water
A- Very Good; Olympic class swimmer
B+ Good; Competent swimmer
B Satisfactory; Permitted in the deep end of the pool
B- Close Call; If it weren't for the life jacket (Minimum pass for Graduate Studies)
C+ Oops; We commit this body to the deep

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

My job as a teacher: To remain accepting of the ways of others, while considering the best way to interfere.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe; dreaming more than others think is practical; expecting more than others think is possible.

Creating a quality product is like making love to a gorilla. You can't quit when you are happy; you stop when the gorilla is satisfied.

I read once that the true mark of a pro — at anything — is that he understands, loves, and is good at even the drudgery of his profession.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

Criticizing is easy and fast. Creating is difficult and slow. The two hours you spent on a book or movie usually took two years to produce. Anyone can tear down someone else’s work. The true test of insight is whether you can help them improve it or build something of your own.

Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.

If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

If you ignore your health long enough, it will go away.

Happiness? That’s nothing more than health and a poor memory.

A big blow from a stranger hurts less than a small blow from a friend.

A friend is somebody who knows all about you and likes you anyway.

Tell me who you walk with and I will tell you who you are.

When you’re too busy for friends, you’re too busy.

Never explain. Your friends don’t need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief, and comfort of friendship were that one had to explain nothing.

You will always have to live with yourself, and it is to your best interest to see that you have good company – a clean, pure, straight, honest, upright, generous, magnamimous companion.

People with friends are moderated by them.

To keep is more important than to make friends. Select those that will wear well; if they are new at first, it is some consolation they will become old.

There is no desert like living without friends. Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil. It is the sole remedy against misfortune, the very ventilation of the soul.

One always measures friendships by how they show up in bad weather.

Silences make the real conversation between friends.
Not the saying, but the never needing to say is what counts.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.

Two may talk together under the same roof for many years, yet never really meet; and two others at first speech are old friends.

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.

The miracles of nature do not seem like miracles because they are so common.

People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.

When making plans, think big.
When making progress, think small.

It's not what you do once in a while, it's what you do day in and day out that makes the difference.

We have no right to ask when a sorrow comes, "Why did this happen to me?" unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way.

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.

Sir Winston Churchill once met with a young New Zealand airman during the Second World War. The airman had crawled out of the cockpit of a bomber with an engine on fire and extinguished the flames. When Churchill met the young man he noted the lad's nervousness. "You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence," Churchill said. When the man admitted that he was, Churchill replied, "Then you can imagine how awkward and humble I feel in yours."

Every man is my superior in some way. In that, I learn from him.

Humility is confidence plus vulnerability.

The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles.

Rule #1: If the price is low, buy it.
Rule #2: If the price goes up, sell it.
Rule #3: If the price goes down, don’t buy it.

No one ever went broke taking a profit.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

If you cannot be kind, at least be vague.

The greatness of a man can nearly always be measured by his willingness to be kind.

You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others.

You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

Give nothing of yourself to others and eventually very little of yourself will be worth having.

A kind word is never lost. It keeps going on and on, from one person to another, until at last it comes back to you again.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Your title makes you a manager. Your people will decide if you're a leader, and it's up to you to live up to that.

Leadership is not a solo sport. If you lead alone, you are not leading.

You are not a leader until you have produced a leader who can produce another leader.

A leader must be humble but not passive; quiet but not silent. The best leaders keep their egos in check and their minds open to others, and admit when they’re wrong. But a leader must be able to speak up when it matters.

Management is a job that can be given to you and taken away. Leadership is a quality that you have to earn.

Being a leader is like being a lady. If you have to remind people you are, you aren’t.

The only requirement for being a leader is to have followers. Managers need to be promoted, but leaders emerge.

Kids imitate the habits of their parents. Teammates match the competitive energy of one another. Employees learn to manage like their supervisor.

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

No matter how unreasonable others may seem, I am responsible for not reacting negatively. Regardless of what is happening around me I will always have the prerogative, and the responsibility, of choosing what happens within me.
I am the creator of my own reality. When I review my day, I know that I must stop judging others. If I judge others, I am probably judging myself. Whoever is upsetting me most is my best teacher. I have much to learn from him or her, and in my heart, I should thank that person.

We learn...
10% of what we read.
20% of what we hear.
30% of what we see.
50% of what we see and hear.
70% of what we discuss with others.
80% of what we experience.
95% of what we teach to someone else.

Failures are much more fun to hear about afterwards; they are not so funny at the time.

The teacher learns more than the student.
The author learns more than the reader.
The speaker learns more than the attendee.
The way to learn is by doing.

The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

Powerful combination = Hate being bad at stuff + Willing to look like a beginner.
People who hate being bad at stuff are driven to improve. However, if they are unwilling to look like a beginner from time to time, they will avoid new challenges and struggle to reinvent themselves.
Meanwhile, people who are willing to try new things, but lack a thirst to improve will settle for mediocre results. It's the willingness to look foolish for a short time—but not for a long time—that leads to jumps in performance.

Some people come into your life as a blessing, others come into your life as a lesson.

Nothing in life is to feared. It is only to be understood.

He who laughs...lasts.

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

The best things in life aren't things.

All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low.

When everything is coming at you, you’re in the wrong lane.

Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think.

I take a simple view of living. It is, keep your eyes open and get on with it.

The best vision is insight.

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again..

Life is the sum of your choices.

Do the easy and comfortable and life becomes difficult. Do the difficult and uncomfortable and life becomes easy.

Life's not about expecting,
hoping and wishing.
It's about doing,
being and becoming.
It's about the choices you've just made,
and the ones you're about to make.
It's about the things you choose to say - today.
It's about what you're gonna do after you
finish reading this.

Worry is like a rocking chair. It will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere. Life is too short to wear tight shoes.

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Do or do not. There is no try.

When I grow up, I want to be a little boy.

With age comes wisdom...although sometimes age shows up all alone.

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.

I’ve heard it said, ‘There is no black and white, only shades of gray.’ Yet, too often in my experience, I have found that black and white does indeed exist and people merely choose to see gray.

This life is no dress rehearsal. Make this one the best that you can.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.

If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.

Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning and you can’t wait to finish your breakfast. You can’t wait to do your exercises. You can’t wait to put on your clothes. You can’t wait to get out – and you can’t wait to come home, because the soup is hot.

Good judgment comes from experience; and experience...well...that comes from bad judgment.

Life is tough...tougher if you're stupid!

If you would be interesting, be interested; if you would be pleased, be pleasing;
if you would be loved, be lovable; if you would be helped, be helpful.

Frogs have it easy; they can eat what bugs them.

Look To This Day (Dad’s Verse)
Look to this day
For it is life, the very life of life.
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Be of good cheer remembering
that the misfortunes hardest to bear
are those which never happen.

The journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step.

“.........................................”

I drink it when I'm happy and when I'm sad. Sometimes I drink it when I'm alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I'm not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I'm thirsty.

There is nothing so uncertain as a sure thing.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

Attitude, after all, is everything.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.

Don’t sweat the small stuff...and it’s all small stuff.

The little things are infinitely the most important.

Stubbornness we deprecate
Firmness we condone.
The former is our neighbor’s trait,
The latter is our own.

Sometimes the littlest things in life are the hardest to take.
You can sit on a mountain more comfortably than on a tack.

Talent is God-given ... be humble;
Fame is man-given ... be thankful;
Conceit is self-given ... BE CAREFUL.

If you shake the ketchup bottle,
None will come, then a lot’il.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

We all want meaningful lives. We look for meaning in everything we do. But suppose there is no meaning! Suppose that life is fundamentally absurd! Suppose there's no reason, or truth, or rightness in anything! What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters? Or suppose everything matters. Which would be worse?

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.

Learn from the mistakes of others; life is not long enough to make them all by yourself.

What happens to you is nowhere near as important as how you react to what happens to you.

Life is easier if you only dread one day at a time.

To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.

You can observe a lot by watching.

Five years from now, you’ll be the same person you are today, except for the people you meet and the books you read.

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.

Love quickens all the senses except the common.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.

The difference between kissing your sister and some other girl.......about 45 seconds.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

It’s difficult to know exactly when love begins. It’s less difficult to know that it has begun.

Pain carves out the inside of the heart so that the next time, it can hold a little more.

I like younger women. Their stories are shorter.

When your heart speaks, take good notes.

To have a child is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

Love your enemies. It makes them SO DAMN MAD.

Relationships are hard. It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice, there should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.

Nothing is waste that makes a memory.

To know and not to speak; in that way, one forgets.

You must have been warned about letting the golden hours slip by;
but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.

When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed, but your childhood.

The past remembers better than it lived.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

Don’t just do something, sit there.

It is better to struggle with a stallion when the problem is how to hold it back, than to urge on a bull which refuses to budge.

By the time I was 14, the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it, so I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

You can’t make nobody do nothing never.

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.

The easiest way to teach children the value of money is to borrow some from them.

The same man cannot be skilled in everything; each has his own special talents.

When I was 16 years old, I thought my father was the dumbest person on the face of the earth. By the time I had reached 21, I was surprised to find how much he had learned.

Greatly disturbed by the English Prime Minister’s condition at a Royal Ball one night, an elderly Countess approached Lord Churchill and stated, “Sir Winston, you are DRUNK!” Without hesitation, Winston Churchill looked her in the eye and said, “My good lady, that may very well be true, but you are UGLY and in the morning, I will be sober!”

There is nothing so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist, the opportunity in every difficulty.

You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Half the world is made up of people who have something to say and can’t. The other half is people who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

A chip on one’s shoulder usually indicates wood higher up.

A person who can’t lead and won’t follow makes a dandy roadblock.

There are three kinds of people in the world: those that understand mathematics and those that don't.

Old Euclid drew a circle
On a sand-beach long ago.
He bounded and enclosed it
With angles thus and so.
His set of solemn graybeards
Nodded and argued much
Of arc and of circumference,
Diameter and such.
A silent child stood by them
From morning until noon,
Because they drew such charming,
Round pictures of the moon.

Our typxwritxr is onx of thosx nxw mxmory modxls. It works quitx wxll xxcxpt for onx of thx kxys. Whilx thxrx arx forty kxys that function wxll xnough, just onx kxy not working makxs all thx diffxrxncx. Somxtimxs pxoplx arx likx this typxwritxr...not all thx kxys arx working. You may say: “Wxll, I am only onx pxrson, I won’t makx or brxak it.” So thx nxxt timx you think you arx only onx pxrson, and that your input is not nxxdxd, rxmxmbxr our typxwritxr!

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try and be in the first group; there was much less competition.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy; the pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time.

The farther a man knows himself to be from perfection, the nearer he is to it.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

Ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That is how the light gets in.

Almost everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy, scared, and yet designed for joy. Even (or especially) people who seem to have it more or less together are more like the rest of us than you would believe. I try not to compare my insides to their outsides, because this makes me much worse than I already am, and if I get to know them, they turn out to have plenty of irritability and shadow of their own. Besides, those few people who aren’t a mess are probably good for about twenty minutes of dinner conversation.

This is good news, that almost everyone is petty, narcissistic, secretly insecure, and in it for themselves, because a few of the funny ones may actually long to be friends with you and me. They can be real with us, the greatest relief. As we develop love, appreciation, and forgiveness for others over time, we may accidentally develop those things toward ourselves, too.

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man, and I will show you a failure.

Do not let the better be the enemy of the good.

When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt!

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

If we want to direct ourlives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in awhile that shapes our lives, but wat we do consistently.

It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

Too often, when all is said and done, more is said than done.

Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.

What you do speaks so clearly that I don’t have to hear what you say.

We have a rule. You speak only if you can improve the silence.

Never retreat, never explain, never apologize, get the thing done and let them howl.

Learn how to separate the majors and the minors. A lot of people don't do well simply because they major in minor things.

Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.

If you are not embarrassed by your product launch, you have waited too long.

Software and cathedrals are much the same – first we build them, then we pray.

It boils down to this: you aren't allowed to tell them [customers] what their problem is, and they aren't allowed to tell you what to build. They own the problem, and you own the solution.

What is the customer’s intent when he first comes to your product/feature?

People don’t want to use your software; they want to have used your software.

There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult

We have thousands of incredibly shitty programs and apps that were shipped on time. Deadlines don't make things better.

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.

A stumble may prevent a fall.

Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second base and keep your feet on first.

Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember: Getting started changes everything.

Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.

When you come out of the strom, you won't be the same persona who walked in. That's what storms are all about.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.

Everything that can be invented, has been invented.

One must lose a minnow to catch a salmon.

Do what you can with what you have, where you are.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

A mistake at least proves somebody stopped talking long enough to do something.

There is only one difference between a rut and a grave... dimensions!

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

A recipe for getting more out of what you read: Start more books. Quit most of them. Read the great ones twice.

Marrying well makes everything easier.

I regret often that I have spoken, rarely that I have been silent.

In the immortal words of Socrates, “I drank what?”

You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.

To steal one idea is plagiarism. To steal many ideas is research.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

If you know a thing only qualitatively, you know it no more than vaguely. If you know it quantitatively - grasping some numerical measure that distinguishes it from an infinite number of other possibilities - you are beginning to know it deeply. You comprehend some of its beauty and you gain access to its power and the understanding it provides. Being afraid of quantification is tantamount to disenfranchising yourself, giving up on one of the most potent prospects for understanding and changing the world.

To find ideas, find problems. To find problems, talk to people.

What people say, what people do, and what people say they do are entirely different things.

After you’ve spent two hours asking focus group participants how they’ll use technology in the next five years, ask them what they intend to have for dinner tomorrow.

That what distinguishes a great scientist is not so much his ability to solve a problem; that is necessary, but not sufficient. He also needs a talent in defining an important problem to work on. One that is amenable to solution.

A dog is a dog except when he is facing you. Then he is Mr. Dog.

Never insult an alligator until you have crossed the river.

A ship in the harbor is safe...but that’s not what ships were made for.

...and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Learn to take risks = juggle with beanbags (not rocks that hurt your feet or balls that roll under the couch. Early testing = juggling with beanbags.

People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

The way someone else perceives what you do is a result of their own experiences (which you can’t control), their own preferences (which you can’t predict), and their own expectations (which you don’t set). If your choices don’t match their expectations that is their concern, not yours.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

How many have laid waste to your life when you weren't aware of what you were losing, how much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements‚ how little of your own was left to you.

Be yourself. Who else is better qualified?

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

I kept looking for somebody to solve the problem. Then I realized. I am somebody.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

How many things are there which I do not want.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

The difference between coaching and criticizing is your attitude.

I told the guys right away that I wasn’t worried about keeping them happy. There were 12 of them and only one of me, so it was a lot easier for them to study me and find ways to keep me happy than for me to satisfy all of them.

Modeling a behavior is stronger than telling someone to act differently.

Momentum is a funny thing... it’s invisible, yet you can see it; it has no substance, yet you can feel it; and it can never be destroyed, only transferred.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.

The Value of Training
The duration of an athletic contest is only for a few minutes, while the training for it may take years of arduous work and continuous exercise and self-effort. The real value of the sport is not the actual game played in the limelight of applause, but the hours of dogged determination and self-discipline carried out alone, imposed and supervised by an exacting conscience. The applause soon dies away, the prize is left behind, but the character you build up is yours forever.

In basketball, the mental is to the physical as four is to one.

Everybody thinks that practice makes perfect, but it is perfect practice that makes perfect.

You are not your action or your skill; the minute you become it, you can no longer deal with it.

Baseball is 90% mental – the other half is physical.

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

All the best coaches are in the stands.

The difference between good players and great players is the difference between doing things almost right and doing them exactly right.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

If something is not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

The secret to success is to like what you are doing.

Think of many things. Do one.

Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.

You can’t be common because the common man goes nowhere. You have to be uncommon.

We will either find a way, or make one.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.

Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.

The t-shirt test… if you can’t make a t-shirt about it, maybe you don’t have a compelling story?

Success and failure have much in common that is good. Both mean you’re trying.

Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

The very first step toward success in any job is to become interested in it.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail...
If you’re going after Moby Dick, take the tartar sauce along.

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion; you must set yourself on fire.

Never wrestle with pigs, because you both get dirty and the pigs love it.

I can sympathize with people’s pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about someone else’s happiness.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Forget your mistakes, but never what they teach you.

I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is easy...just try to please everybody.

Some years ago a promising IBM junior executive lost the company several million dollars in a risky venture. Thomas J. Watson Sr., IBM’s founder, called the executive into his office and the young man blurted out, “I guess you want my resignation?” Watson replied, “You can’t be serious. We’ve just spent millions of dollars educating you!”

Plan ahead: it wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.

Failures are rehearsals for success.

Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have for which you would not take money.

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

It’s like learning to ski. If you’re not falling down, you’re not learning.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision...the ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

If at first you don’t succeed, you are like most other people.

The American dream...working at a job you don't really like to pay for things you don't really want.

Whatever impedes a man, but does not stop him aids his progress.

Success is a journey, not a destination.

A positive attitude won’t always work, but a negative attitude will never fail you.

Discipline yourself and no one else will have to.

Obstacles are the things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles that he has overcome while trying to succeed.

The only place SUCCESS comes before WORK is in the dictionary.

The value and the meaning of a life are found in the way in which that person has interacted with the people around him or her, and how these other lives have been affected by this interaction. Think of the people now deceased- relatives, teachers, friends - those who affected your life for the better; through your changed life, you give them a sort of immortality. And we all can achieve that same sort of immortality in the lives of the people we touch. If that's the only kind of immortality there is, I shall not be disappointed.

A man may make mistakes, but he isn’t a failure until he starts blaming someone else.

The way to double your success rate is to double your failure rate.

Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.

The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.

Even the biggest problem in the world today could have been solved when it was still small.

It Couldn’t Be Done
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t, but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that,
At least no one ever has done it.”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and YOU’LL DO IT!!

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.

Individuals win battles. Teams win wars.

If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

Time is nature’s way of preventing everything happening at once.

Time, like a snowflake, disappears while we’re trying to decide what to do with it.

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.

A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches isn’t sure.

When we don’t waste time, we always have enough.

The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese

Here’s to cold nights, warm friends, and a good drink to give them.

Here’s to the four hinges of Friendship
– Swearing, Lying, Stealing, and Drinking.
When you swear, swear by your country;
When you lie, lie for a pretty woman;
When you steal, steal away from bad company;
And when you drink, drink with me.

Here’s to you, old friend, may you live a thousand years,
Just to sort of cheer things in this vale of human tears;
And may I live a thousand too – a thousand – less a day,
Cause I wouldn’t care to be on earth and hear you’d passed away.

May we never have friends who, like shadows,
follow us in sunshine only to desert us on a cloudy day.

A little health, a little wealth,
A little house and freedom:
With some few friends for certain ends
But little cause to need ‘em.

May you live all the days of your life.

May you always distinguish between the weeds and the flowers.

May we be happy and our enemies know it.

May the clouds in your life form only the background for a beautiful sunset.

Here’s looking up your kilt!

Bless this food and us that eats it.

May our house always be too small to hold all our friends.

Here’s to Hell!
May the stay there
Be as much fun as the way there!

Here’s to you. Here’s to me.
May we never disagree.
But, if we do, to Hell with you
and here’s to me!

I have known many, liked a few,
Loved but one...here’s to you!

A tourist is a man who travels thousands of miles so he can be photographed in front of his car.

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

I don't trust people who don’t love themselves and tell me ‘I love you.’ There is an African saying which is: ‘Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.

All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Everybody complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it!

The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give ‘em a number or give ‘em a date, but never give ‘em both at once.

If I were running the world, I would have it rain only between 2 and 5 A.M. Anyone who was out then ought to get wet.

Winning takes commitment.

Win today and we will walk together forever.

Whenever you want to do something that is out of the “ordinary” and outside of what most people think is possible, remember: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.""

Winning isn’t everything, but the desire to is.

Work will win where wishing won’t. If you don’t know how, just begin... you’ll find a way.

To be prepared is half the victory.

It’s not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game even starts.

You can’t expect to win unless you know why you lose.

The more you win, the harder it is to lose.

There is plenty of room at the top... but no room to sit down.

Learn to lose as though you had won, then learn to win as though you had lost.

There is no glory in defense... just victory.

Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal, but the value in winning is only as great as the value of the goal reached.

Winning isn’t everything and losing isn’t nothing.

The difficult we do right away; the impossible may take a little longer.

Luck is the residue of design.

Add umph to try and see what you come up with.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

When the going gets tough, the conditioned person usually wins.

Pride lasts longer than pain.

It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. Until you lose.

Who can ask more of a man than giving all within his span? Giving all it seems to me is not so far from victory.

Hit the ball over the fence and you can take your time going around the bases.

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

The difference between efficiency and effectiveness is that efficiency is doing things right, while effectiveness is doing the right things.

The trouble with opportunity is that it always seems to come disguised as hard work.

Nothing will work unless you do.

The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it.

Even a mosquito does not get a slap on the back until he begins to work!

If there is no wind... row!

Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you’re swinging.