Puddle thinking

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!”

This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

-Douglas Adams

Action

"There is a risk and cost to action. But they are far less than the long-range risk of comfortable inaction."

- John F Kennedy

The pursuit of success

"I haven't failed. I just found 10.000 ways that didn't work"

- Thomas Edison

The power of the mind

"Be aware of how you think. Thoughts will become words. Words will become action. Action will become habits. Habits will become personality. Personality will become your destiny."

Expectations?

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

-W. Somerset Maugham

Success

“Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is more important than the outcome”

– Arthur Ashe (US tennis legend)

Circumstances

People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I do not believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they cannot find them, they make them.

- George Bernard Shaw

Visualisation

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously and never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop this picture!

- Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Work

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"

- Oscar Wilde

Human desire

Human desire for freedom knows no bounds of race or religion or region.

- David Milliband, UK Foreign Secretary, Friday 28 September 2007, speaking in response to the escalating violence in Burma inflicted by the military regime on the Burmese people

Cleverness

The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it.

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Self

"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."

- Nigel Hawthorne

Right

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."

G. K. Chesterton
English author & mystery novelist (1874 - 1936)

Laughter

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Bad luck

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Embracing Ignorance

"Working class doesn't any longer describe a stratum of society. It is a cultural commodity, dreamed up by glossy magazines and Channel 4 and whoever else has a material stake in kitschifying crassness. It's an option you may refuse...You don't have to read Jordan's autobiography or take The Sun. You don't have to refuse to let your child eat polenta for school dinners and go on stuffing him with meat pie. You don't have to stagger legless through Prague the night before your wedding. Footballers are not an obligation, pop music is not a birthright, knowing nothing is not your heritage."

- Howard Jacobson in The Independent

Belief

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

- Gerry Spence

Insight

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

- Albert Einstein

Relationships

By refusing to put language to it, you pretend it doesn't exist.

- Josh Lyman

Determination

There is no failure for the man who realises his power, who never knows when he is beaten; there is no failure for the determined endeavour, the unconquerable will. There is no failure for the man who gets up every time he falls, who rebounds like a rubber ball, who persists when everyone else gives up, who pushes on when everyone else turns back.