Quotes/Snippets noted by Josh Richards

2010-05-18T16:41:00.001-07:00

"What getting good at marketing can do for the individual is to help him or her find the clients they could care about and be eager to help, and the types of work that would be truly stimulating. The better you are at marketing, the more truly professional you can be, because you are not forced to take money from anyone and everyone just because you need the cash."

--David Maister in "Doing It For The Money"

2010-05-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

"Pessimists are usually more accurate, but optimists usually are more successful because they think they are doing better than they really are so they continue to take more action, and more action, and more action, and more action, and more action."
--Jerry (last name unknown)

2010-05-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

"Writing is really an attempt to understand the chaos of this life and what it all means. There's always a deeper level of understanding to go to so it can never be perfect."

--Michael Ruhlman

2010-05-03T17:52:00.000-07:00

"Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Marianne Williamson

2010-05-03T17:47:00.000-07:00

We have the knowledge and intuition to maintain health, but we ignore it by taking ourselves out of the present. We plan meal times instead of eating when we are hungry. We go on diets instead of living healthy. We have deferred life plans instead of choosing and doing our passion.

--Tara Stiles ("How To Look Better Naked And Get The Keys To The Universe")

2010-04-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

We generally are where we are and who we are in life as the result of circumstance. It's usually not the circumstance themselves that are the cause of our condition—it's the choices we've made and the actions we've taken or not taken within the context of those circumstances that have created the "reality in which we live."

I'm not casting blame, nor am I ignoring the fact there are incredible challenges, disadvantages, hardships, and even cruelty in the world. Some of the conditions and situations people of the world have had to endure exceed my capacity to imagine or perhaps even cope. But for most of us, living in relative safety, freedom, and within the confines of civilized societies, there's more than simply "hope", there's the opportunity to create the life we can imagine.

--Spike Humer here

2010-03-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

"I had to learn how to collaborate across disciplines, how to change gears when changing from research to development, how to make industry work - in short, how to be both effective and productive."

--Dr. James W. Black

2010-02-18T10:26:00.000-08:00

Too busy? Can't spare the time? You are not alone.

Yet strangely enough, people can always find days, weeks, months and sometimes years to do things again – and again - after they get them wrong … but not the few hours it takes to find out how to do them right in the first place.

--Drayton Bird

2010-02-12T14:51:00.000-08:00

Q. What are you trying to drive into people’s heads when you say, “It’s not the economy, stupid, it’s you.”

A. Look, what happened yesterday is now done. Tomorrow is a new day. I have to cut my costs viciously. I have to spend a great deal more time on my sales and marketing, and I have to stop whining and get to work.

--George Cloutier, founder of American Management Services
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/business/smallbusiness/11sbiz.html
http://www.amserv.com/

2010-02-03T14:19:00.001-08:00

"I think that the successful Entrepreneur will continually create more opportunity and the unsuccessful Entrepreneur will continually give excuses for their challenges."

--Bill Glazer, GKIC

2010-01-27T10:43:00.000-08:00

"If you improve by just 1 percent a day, in 70 days you’re twice as good."

[...]

"The good news and the bad news is that it takes only 1 percent a day, because while that sounds eminently achievable, it also denies you the excuse of volume, magnitude, and overwhelm. The sad reason that most people cannot make their dreams come true has more to do with procrastination than inability; delay rather than obstacle; lassitude instead of immovable objects."

--Alan Weiss in Thrive! Stop Wishing Your Life Away (http://bit.ly/auP7PJ)

2009-12-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't as 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 will find success. "

-- Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (Founder and former CEO of IBM)

2009-12-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

"We generally judge the difficulty of a proposed action by how much we are resisting it rather than by how much skill or technical expertise it will take. So many people see doing their tax return as very difficult, even though no real skill is involved."

--Mark Forster

2009-11-16T10:42:00.001-08:00

"I spend most of my day writing. I write everything on our website. Communicating clearly is my top priority. Web writing is terrible, and corporate sites are the worst. You don't know what they do, who they are, or what they stand for. I spend a lot of time taking a sentence and reworking it until it's perfect. I love the editing process."

--Jason Fried, 37Signals.com

2009-10-22T15:27:00.001-07:00

"I have a very simple philosophy on life. You shouldn’t steal from yourself. If you’re going to commit your life to an enterprise, wealth creation, the security and the financial well-being of your family… and if other people your staff, your team, your employees, your vendors are going to commit their lives to you, you owe it to yourself and to everyone else to get the highest and best results. You should never accept a fraction of the yield when with the same effort or less, the same people or fewer, the same time or less, the same capital or less, the same opportunity cost or less, can deliver so much more to you currently, and perpetually."

--Jay Abraham

2009-10-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

"Confidence and competence is not the same thing. No one should go into their garden and chant, 'There are no weeds. There are no weeds. There are no weeds.' For people to be true leaders, they have to first see things as they are, not worse. Then see it better than it is, and then make it the way you see it."

--Anthony Robbins (as quoted in SUCCESS Magazine, January 2009)

2009-10-09T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Competition doesn't breed innovation; it breeds conformity."

--Steve Miller (http://theadventure.com/)

2009-10-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

"I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time."

--Herbert B. Swope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Bayard_Swope

2009-10-08T09:14:00.000-07:00

"Selling stuff is easy. All you gotta do is give away stuff that makes people happy …and then sell stuff that makes ‘em even happier."

-- Frank Kern

2009-09-21T20:15:00.001-07:00

"Negative criticism is easy because it is always possible to find fault with anything if one looks hard enough. It is quite easy to concentrate on the faults and ignore what is worthwhile. But the main and overriding attraction of criticism is that it at once makes the critic superior to what he is criticizing."

--Edward de Bono (http://www.debonothinking.com/)

2009-09-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

"We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place."

--Edward De Bono

2009-09-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

Bill Russell is one of the great names in basketball, an all-American… and the only athlete to ever win an NCAA Championship, an Olympic Gold Medal, and a professional championship all in the same year—1956…But Bill Russell had this one problem: He threw up before every game.

--John Eliot, PhD (The Maverick Mindset and Overachiever)

2009-09-03T10:04:00.000-07:00

"As soon as we concern ourselves with the 'good' and 'bad' of our fellows, we create an opening in our hearts for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weakens and defeats us." -- Morihei Ueshiba

(today's quote is dedicated to Wicke Chandler, who lost his life in a tragic accident yesterday)

2009-08-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

"There are three kinds of people. One kind is the dumb ones who don't learn. The smart ones who learn from their own mistakes. Very smart ones. But then there are the wise ones, the ones who learn from other people's mistakes."
-- not sure

Several

2009-08-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Ran across some great quotes (and individuals) on Jonathan Stark's web site. Below are some of my favorites:

In times of change, the learners will inherit the world and the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. - William James

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure - Colin Powell [I continually encounter folks who put in the hard work, but lacking in either preparation or, more importantly, learning from failure... and I'm not innocent either. -jr]

Why do you wake up in the morning and do things? If you can't answer that, you might as well end it now. - Peter Baer

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year - John Foster Dulles

A problem well stated is a problem half solved. - Charles F. Kettering

A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire

Security is mostly superstition. It doesn't exist in nature. Life is a great adventure or it is nothing. - Helen Keller

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. - Albert Einstein

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge. - Don Henley

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity. - General Douglas MacArthur

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

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. - Albert Einstein

Happiness depends upon ourselves. - Aristotle

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

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

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. - Eleanor Roosevelt