A Thousand Years Of Human Experience

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
--Alan J. Perlis, Epigrams, 1970s

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid: humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.
--Albert Einstein

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.
--Bjarne Stroustrup (originator of C++ programming language)

Testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence.
-- E. Dijkstra

Science

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
--G.K. Chesterton

Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. As a result, genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework.
--Thomas Edison

One who makes no mistakes, never makes anything.
--English proverb

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
--Linus Pauling

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

Communication

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
--Mark Twain

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
--William Strunk Jr.

I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.
--Blaise Pascal

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.
--Wilson Mizner

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.
--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Management

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
--Chinese Proverb

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

Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
--Stephen R. Covey

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.
--Maurice Maeterlink

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
--Grace Murray Hopper

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
--Fred Allen

Most of the bright people don't work for you -- no matter who you are.

--Bill Joy

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
--W. Somerset Maugham

Those who failed to oppose me, who readily agreed with me, accepted all my views, and yielded easily to my opinions, were those who did me the most injury, and were my worst enemies,

--Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Behold the turtle. He only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
--James Bryant Conant, Past President of Harvard University

Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, 'We've always done it this way.
 --Grace Hopper

A ship in port is safe but that's not what ships are for.
--Grace Hopper

You can't escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
--Abraham Lincoln

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
--Peter Drucker

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
--Mike Schmoker

Reforms often fail because politics favors symbols over substance.
--Mike Schmoker

You see, when there is danger, a good leader takes the front line. But when there is celebration, a good leader stays in the back room. If you want the cooperation of human beings around you, make them feel that they are important.
--Nelson Mandela

Keep in mind that everything someone does for you has an opportunity cost. That means if someone takes time out of his or her day to attend to you, there's something they haven't done for themselves or for someone else. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking your request is small. They have to stop what they're doing, focus on your request, and take the time to respond.

--Tina Seelig

Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
--Aristotle

A leader leads by example not by force.
--Sun Tzu

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
--Andrew Carnegie

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
--Harry S. Truman

Teaching

They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
--Carl Buchner

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
--Confucius

What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.
--Aristotle

The illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn.
--Alvin Toffler

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The best kind of education prepares students not merely for the first job they will hold, but for the last one.
--Jim Appleton, President, University of Redlands

Inspiration

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed ... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.
--Abigail Adams, letter to her son John Quincy Adams

There are only two rules for success:

1.      Never tell everything you know.
2.       
--Anonymous

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
--G.K. Chesterton

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
--Bill Cosby

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.
--Jean Sibelius

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
--James Thurber

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live now.
--Joan Baez

The Church is the only fellowship in the world where the one requirement for membership is the unworthiness of the candidate.
--Robert B. Munger

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.
--Benjamin Franklin

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
--Warren Buffett

Alexander, Charlemagne and myself all tried to found an empire on force and we failed. Jesus Christ is building an empire on love, and today there are millions of people who would gladly die for His sake.
--Napoleon

If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
--Stephen Levine

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters.
--Alan Simpson

You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence is not an event -- it is a habit.
--Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

No one will pay you to solve a non-problem.
--Vinod Kosla, co-founder, Sun Microsystems

Find the intersection between you interests, your skills, and the market. That's what a career is.
--Tina Seelig

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

Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin's womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked "No Entrance" and left through a door marked "No Exit."
--Peter Larson

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
--Vincent Van Gogh

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
--Edmund Burke

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
--Socrates

My company mascot is the bumblebee. Because of its tiny wings and heavy body, aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. But the bumblebee doesn't know that, so it flies anyways.
--Mary Kay Ash

If you have love, you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
--Sir James M. Barrie

You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
--Charles F. Kettering

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as making a 'life'.
--Maya Angelou

The way things are is not the way things have to be.
--Emmanual Katongole and Chris Rice

We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
--Lyndon B. Johnson

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform.
--Susan B. Anthony

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
--Mark Twain

Smooth seas do not make a skillful sailor.
--African proverb

We are like tea bags -- we don't know our own strength until we're in hot water.
--Sister Busche

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
--Nelson Mandela

Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.
--James Allen

Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality.
--Les Brown

Failure

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
--Thomas Edison

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

99 percent of success is built on failure.

Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerposts on the road to achievement.

--Charles Kettering

Would you like me to give you a formula for... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... you can be discouraged by failure -- or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success.
--Thomas J. Watson, American Businessman, Founder of IBM

I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot... and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
--Michael Jordan

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.
--Abraham Lincoln

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
--Bill Cosby

The great question is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with failure.
--William Shakespeare

Yes, risk taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.
--Tim McMahon

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.
--Frederick B. Wilcox

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
--Woody Allen

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.
--Zig Ziglar

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.
--Scott Adams

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
--Henry Ford

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
--Edward Phelps

Other

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
--A. Maslow

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

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
--Mark Twain

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
--Erica Jong