Inspiration

You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. — Al Capone (1899-1947)

When you are right, you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative. — Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself. — Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Think simple’ as my old master used to say—reduce the whole into the simplest terms and get back to first principles. — Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well. — Josh Billings

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

If you’re going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. — Mother Teresa

If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed. — Kate Halverson

If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z; X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Don’t look back—something might be gaining on you. — Satchel Paige

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. — William Faulkner

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable. — Francis Bacon

Change before you have to. — Jack Welch

Beware of small expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it. — Colin Powell

Always behave like a duck—keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath. — Jacob Braude

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was. — Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right. — Mary Kay Ash

Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild, harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the glaring defects in other people’s characters. — Margaret Halsey

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another. — Helen Keller

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. — Alexander Graham Bell

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Well done is better than well said. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

We must become the change we want to see. — Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. — Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist but the ability to start over. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it. — Colin Wilson

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one. — Ellen Hubbard

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is. — Arnold Bennett

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. — Alan Kay

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. — Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun Tzu

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me. — Carol Burnett

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Nothing succeeds like—failure. — Anonymous

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door. — Emily Dickinson

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds. — Buddha

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them. — Orison Swett Marden

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. — Seneca (3 B.C. – 65 A.D.)

It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies. — Arthur Calwell

If you don’t throw it, they can’t hit it. — Lefty Gomez

Ideas won’t keep; something must be done about them. — Alfred North Whitehead

I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone. — Cyrano De Bergerac

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. — Donald Trump

I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t. — Lucille Ball

He that would have the fruit must climb the tree. — Thomas Fuller

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks. — Herodotus

Good order is the foundation of all things. — Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. — Richard P. Feynman

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. — Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great. — Kenny Rogers

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. — Theodore Roosevelt

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Diligence is the mother of good luck. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Constant dripping hollows out a stone. — Lucretius

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones. — Phillip Brooks

By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. — Ashleigh Brilliant

As for courage and will—we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead. — Andre Norton

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours. — Richard Bach

Always do what you are afraid to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

All things are difficult before they are easy. — Thomas Fuller

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp—or what’s a heaven for? — Robert Browning

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. — David Brinkley

A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood. — George S. Patton, General (1885-1945)

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. — Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

A life without cause is a life without effect. — Barbarella

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm. — Anonymous

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. — Cynthia Heimel

When a man says it’s a silly, childish game, it’s probably something his wife can beat him at. — Epperson’s law

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. — Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

We love because it’s the only true adventure. — Nikki Giovanni

We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. — William Gladstone

We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him. — Shelley Winters

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. — Anonymous

We can do not great things—only small things with great love. — Mother Teresa

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage. — Lao-Tzu (570?-490? B.C.)

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you’re wrong, admit it; whenever you’re right, shut up. — Ogden Nash

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess. — Rainer Maria Rilke

There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations. — Francois de La Rouchefoucauld

There is one thing more exasperating than a spouse who can cook and won’t, and that’s a spouse who can’t cook and will. — Anonymous

There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can’t set it right in the course of an afternoon. — Giraudoux

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. — Homer

There is nothing better for the spirit or the body than a love affair. It elevates the thoughts and flattens the stomachs. — Barbara Howar

The theory used to be you marry an older man because they are more mature. The new theory is that men don’t mature. So you might as well marry a younger one. — Anonymous

The story of a love is not important—what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity. — Helen Hayes

The only thing worse than a man you can’t control is a man you can. — Margo Kaufman

The love we give away is the only love we keep. — Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

The best way to get husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they are too old to do it. — Shirley MacLaine

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. — Gloria Steinem

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball. — Deborah Tannen

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one. — Mae West (1892-1980)

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to appreciate his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. — Israel Zangwill

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, “Certainly, I can!” Then get busy and find out how to do it. — Theodore Roosevelt

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job. — George Crane

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)

We can loan you enough money to get you completely out of debt. — Sign on a bank window

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. — Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it. — G. K. Chesterton

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

I’m proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. — Arthur Godfrey

If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments. — Earl Wilson

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars. — J. Paul Getty

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. — Henry Ford (1863-1947)

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion. — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

I owe the government $3,400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat. — Michael McShane

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not. — Fran Lebowitz

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work. — Robert Orben

Economists are people who work with numbers but don’t have the personality to be accountants. — Anonymous

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Ask five economists and you’ll get five different answers (six if one went to Harvard). — Edgar R. Fiedler

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. — Laurence J. Peter

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible. — Alfred A. Knopf

An economic forecaster is like a cross-eyed javelin thrower: they don’t win many accuracy contests, but they keep the crowd’s attention. — Anonymous

A dollar saved is a quarter earned. — John Ciardi

A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward. — Anonymous

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. — Robert Frost

Besides the noble art of getting things done, master the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. — Lin Yutang

Not to know is bad. Not to want to know is worse. — African proverb

I may not be the man I want to be. I may not be the man I ought to be. I may not be the man I could be. I may not be the man I can be. But praise God, I’m not the man I once was. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries — James A. Michener

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