General Quotes

Leadership is one of the things you cannot delegate. You either exercise it or abdicate it. (Robert Goizueta)

You’re waiting for something to happen, and you expect it to go one of two ways. But you’re wrong, because there’s always a third way. (Bad Things Happen, Harry Dolan)

The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity. (Leo Tolstoy)

When you become a leader, you lose the right to think about yourself. (The Reverend Gerald Brooks)

The past isn’t past. It isn’t even dead. (William Faulkner)

I don’t have a social agenda. I just don’t choose to ignore what’s in front of me. (John Sayles)

An invitation to the party is not the same as a seat at the table. (Laura Flanders)

Power is the capacity to generate relationships. (Margaret Wheatley)

Unity, like so many good things, is good only in moderation. (Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead)

Courage…speaking your mind while telling your heart. (Courage, old English definition)

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. (Anaïs Nin)

Values, the non-negotiable tenets against which we measure the worthiness of our choices. (Clicks and Mortar)

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient data. (Samuel Butler)

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power. (Eric Hoffer)

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. (John Maynard Keynes)

Equity is about making the invisible visible. (Simone Joyaux)

Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. (The Poisonwood Bible)

You have to take power. No one gives it. (Frederick Douglass)

I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black…men are men. (Shirley Chisolm)

Never separate the lives you live from the words you speak. (Senator Paul Wellstone)

Data itself is nothing unless one uses it as a resource from which to draw conclusions. (Dune: The Machine Crusade)

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Radicalism: The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today. (Ambrose Pierce)

It will not do to leave a live dragon out of your plan if you live near one. (The Hobbitt)

We must accept finite disappointment but we must never give up infinite hope. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

The story of America…fear of the alien… (Poet Major Jackson)

True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to. (Good to Great)

Hope has two daughters, anger and courage. They are both lovely. (St. Augustine)

A society in crisis reveals its true nature. (John Barry)

Art is not a mirror but a hammer to shape society. (Bertolt Brecht)

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

Nothing is forever except change. (Buddha)

The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action. (Madame de Staël)

Mistakes are the portal of discovery. (James Joyce)

Justice before charity. (Pope John XXIII)

The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must. (Thucydides)

The quality of leaders matters less than the quality of citizens. (George Scialabba)

When your heart speaks, take good notes. (Judith Campbell)

The true measure of a nation’s success is not gross national product, but gross national happiness.’ (King of Bhutan)

La esperanza muerte última.” (Hope dies last.) (Jessie de la Cruz)

Greatness is always built on this foundation: the ability to appear, speak and act, as the most common man. (Shams-ud-din Muhammed Hafiz)

Nothing is possible without men, nothing is sustainable without institutions. (Jean Monnet)

The arc of moral justice is long, but it bends toward justice. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. (FDR)

All you have to do is decide what to do with the time given to you. (Lord of the Rings)

Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18)

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. (Winston Churchill)

Leadership is not an entitlement; it has to be earned and sustained. (Phoenix Initiative)

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities. (Winston Churchill)

The art of leadership is knowing what you can’t compromise on. (Tribes)

What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change. (Tribes)

The job of education is to teach people how to ask the right questions, the really cage-rattling questions that produce thinking, learning, and change. (Joyaux)

It is the best of times and the worst of times. (Charles Dickens)

Democracy is about process – how we make our decisions. (Democracy (unknown))

I’m sick and tired of old men making up wars for young men to die in. (George McGovern, Vietnam)

The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones; that is, they are the only convincing conclusions. (Kierkegaard)

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. (Emily Dickinson)

The only thing worse than starting something and failing…is not starting something. (Seth Godin)

Learning never exhausts the mind. (Leonardo Da Vinci)

Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here we should dance. (Bobbie Hooper)

How do I create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves? (Edward Deci)

You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you don’t mind who gets the credit. (Harry S. Truman)

If 600,000 people have to die in order for the nation to live, then 600,000 people will die. (Abraham Lincoln)

I believe the government has the right to recover from the heirs to the fortunes of its most successful citizens some portion of those fortunes. (Bill Gates Sr.)

For the poor, the economic is spiritual. (Mohandas K. Gandhi)

Poverty does not produce unhappiness: it produces degradation. (George Bernard Shaw)

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. (Calvin Coolidge)

The loneliest sound in the world is other people making love. (City of Thieves)

I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye, like tracer bullets at night. (City of Thieves)

Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake? (John Kerry)

Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. (Understand/be understood)

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. (Ted Kennedy)

Being a woman implies being in a male context. Being a man implies being fully yourself. (Robert Parker, novelist)

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time. (Erik Qualman)

Time is precious. Waste it wisely. (Unknown)

I could only wonder again at the white race’s naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries. (Sunset Limited by James Lee Burke)

Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn’t mean mattered. (Seth Godin)

Every revolution destroys the average middle first and most savagely. (Seth Godin (02-02-10 blog speaking about change in publishing, etc.))

I feel I oughtta apologize for bein’ less than you probably imagined me to be. (Crazy Heart)

True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to. (Jim Collins)

Being a woman implies being in a male context. Being a man implies being fully yourself. (Robert Parker)

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience. (Denis Waitley)

He’s nearly always right. Not because he knows everything. But because he never talks about things he doesn’t know. (Robert Parker)

The time for justice and equality is always right now. (The Great Debaters)

An unjust law is no law at all. (Saint Augustine)

If you’re willing to get lost, you may find a way out. (Joanne Akalaitas)

Evil societies always kill their consciences. (James L. Farmer, Jr.)

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religions, and avoid the people, you might better stay home. (James Michener)

In the long run there is no more liberating, no more exhilarating experience than to determine one’s position, state it bravely, and then act boldly. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Tout vient à son heure pour qui sait attendre…Everything comes at its appointed time… (War and Peace)

If there is any chance of becoming the person you haven’t yet become…will I know how to seize that chance? (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

As everybody knows, diplomacy always fails when there is an imbalance of power. (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others? (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit. (Nelson Henderson)

We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem. (Marian Wright Edelman)

The greatest menace to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. (Daniel Boorstin)

What is the value of interactions that contain no understanding of us and that contribute nothing to a shared store of human meaning? (Sherry Tuckle)

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. (Christiane Amanpour)

Objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing. (Christiane Amanpour)

The joy of travel is to let different cultures seep into your identity. It’s not to bring your own culture with you so you can inflict it on the native populace. (Seth Stevenson)

Culture is always about politics in the end. (Mohammed Moulessehoul, Algerian novelist)

When you’re putting together a story, sometimes you just have to skip over the boring bits. (Laurie R. King)

Only the careless leave a possibility unattended due to assumptions. (Laurie R. King)

Make the important interesting. (James Fallows)

Effective process is not bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is senseless process. (Jeff Bezos)

People are all the same. We need a personal reason to get our asses off the couch. (Olen Steinhauer, The Nearest Exit)

Some were paid solely for their ability to dream up the unthinkable. (Olen Steinhauer, The Nearest Exit)

Never blame malevolence when there is so much stupidity to go around. (Tim Fernholz)

It was best to believe in all possibilities…there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand. (Iron Lake, W.K. Krueger)

It seemed that the good people were always cleaning up the messes. (Iron Lake, W.K. Krueger)

You stopped looking for the truth…I’d guess that’s a sin we’ve all been guilty of. (Iron Lake, W.K. Krueger)

If you make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. (Carl Sagan)

Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory. (William Barclay)

Lying’s just lazy. (Nora Roberts, Happy Ever After)

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity (Fred Chaney)

Change is inevitable, progress is optional. (Unknown)

Never humiliate anyone. (Hans Blix)

Problem was that we could make things worse but we couldn’t make anything better. (Richard North Patterson, In the Name of Honor)

Morally repugnant and tactically stupid [are] a lousy combination. (Richard North Patterson, In the Name of Honor)

No one should be judged by the worst moment of his life. (Richard North Patterson, In the Name of Honor)

Aggressiveness is good in a combat leader. Combining that with ambition and insecurity becomes more problematic. (Richard North Patterson, In the Name of Honor)

An excuse always exists to avoid redressing the inexcusble. (Stephen Eric Bonner)

He didn’t believe he could fix the world, but he felt he could. He just had to try harder.”
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Neither our own passing nor the passing of an era is a tragedy, no matter how much we would like to think it is. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

We all end up in the same place. Some sonner than others. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

My experience has been that people who die for causes have few friends in death. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

Now his sin has become mine, ’cause I didn’t speak up. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

Don’t undo a brave and noble deed. Don’t rob yourself of your own virtue. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

Don’t let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death. (James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow)

A troublesome question? Those tend to be the only whorthwhile kind. (Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind)

Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. (Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind)

You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere. (Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind)

After a certain point is reached the numbers cease to matter, and all that remains is the faceless mass of a crowd. (Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind)

When someone tells you a piece of their life, they’re giving you a gift, not granting you your due. (The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss)

It might not be true, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonsense. (The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss)

The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. (James Baldwin)

“Time exists so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” (Madeleine L’Engle)

“A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refused to destroy.” (John Sawhill)

“But if you couldn’t do everything, did that mean you did nothing?” (Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay)

“What man would dare believe that all he planned might come to pass?” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“Irritation for some men was their response to strain.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“He did think he knew what was coming. Some moves in a game could be anticipated.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“The military preferred – invariably – those who could be readily defined, assigned roles, understood, and controlled.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“Men made wagers with their judgment, their allegiances, their resources.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“He wouldn’t have been lying, but he might have been wrong.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“You have to be afraid for it to count as bravery.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“Why did becoming accustomed to something have to render its pleasures stale?” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“He’s already made a decision within. He’d only needed to acknowledge it, say it, bring it into the world.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“Weariness, sometimes more than anything else, can bring an end to war.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“It is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.” (Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay)

“In America, where surface has always passed for substance…” (Stephen King)

“The past is obdurate. It doesn’t want to change.” (Stephen King)

“The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling hesitation research.” (Stephen King)

“Artistic talent is far more common than the talent to nurture artistic talent.” (Stephen King)

“When the time is gone, you can never get it back.” (Stephen King)

“When a story is told, it is not forgotten.” (Sarah’s Key)

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

“We live in stories the way fish live in water.” (Daniel Taylor)

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” (Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams)

“Trapped in a trap of your own making.” (David Baldacci, The Innocent)

“Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism and wars.” (Dale Carnegie)

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” (Dale Carnegie)

“Crisis precedes transformation.” (Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard)