When something is finally obvious that should have been obvious years before, we call it common sense.
It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.
I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
Courage is a moral quality , it is not a chance gift of nature like an aptitude for games. It is a cold choice between two alternatives, the fixed resolve not to quit , an act of renunciation which must be made not once but many times by the power of the will. Courage is will power.
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
My life is my message.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
Remember, there is no situation so completely hopeless that something constructive can not be done about it. When faced with a minus, ask yourself what you can do to make it a plus. A person practicing this attitude will extract undreamed-of outcomes from the most unpromising situations. Realize that there are no hopeless situations, there are only people who take hopeless attitudes.
If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Tough times never last but tough people do.
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
There is no greatness without a passion to be great, whether it's the aspiration of an athlete or an artist, a scientist, a parent, or a businessperson.
The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
A way of life can not be successful so long as it is mere intellectual conviction. It must be deeply felt, deeply believed, dominant even in dreams.
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Slow but steady wins the race.
I never could have done without the habits of punctuality, order and diligence the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.
I have seen too much of the vanity of human affairs, to expect felicity from the splendid scenes of public life.
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Education means inspiring someones mind, not just filling their head.
Remember the difference between a boss and a leader a boss says "Go ! '' -- a leader says "Let's go ! ''
No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Seek first to understand, then be understood
With malice toward none, with charity for all.
Leadership is power to endure an ongoing quest for information or influence not just actual triumphs like making profits or achieving stated objectives.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished. Duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the truth.
We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a personal god, a savior or a prophet to do everything for us. Long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from god, fear remains with us, but when we know ourselves to be the one, fear goes, of what can we be afraid ?
The real test in golf and in life is not in keeping out of the rough, but in getting out after you are in.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.
The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.
We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
If you don't first handle fear and desire, and you get rich, you'll be a high pay slave.
Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Attitude is everything.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Talent does you no good unless it's recognized by someone else.
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
The "Inside-Out" approach to personal and self , even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self - with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
O Captain ! My Captain ! our fearful trip is done.
Know thyself was the inscription over the Oracle at Delphi. And it is still the most difficult task any of us faces. But until you truly know yourself, strengths and weaknesses, know what you want to do and why you want to do it, you can not succeed in any but the most superficial sense of the word. The leader never lies to himself, especially about himself, knows his flaws as well as his assets, and deals with them directly. You are your own raw material. When you know what you consist of and why you want to make of it, then you can invent yourself.
Rock and roll is the music of America, of youth, of rebellion, and of the common spirit that ties all that together.
Success is the child of audacity.
You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
Reach for the stars.
Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.
As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to god.
Be like the turtle. If he didn't stick his neck out, he wouldn't get anywhere at all.
To succeed, you need to take that gut feeling in what you believe and act on it with all of your heart.
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.
We reap what we sow - we are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing, those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind ? We make our own destiny.
You don't get to choose how you're going to die, only how you're going to live.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.
Happiness is the indication that man has found the answer to the problem of human existence the productive realization of his potentialities and thus, simultaneously, being one with the world and preserving the integrity of his self.
In order to succeed you must fail so that you know what not to do the next time.
The "how" thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile "ifs" but goes right to work on the creative "how''.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
The road to success is always under construction.
Failure ? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.
In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Change does not change tradition. It strengthens it. Change is a challenge and an opportunity, not a threat. Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.
Your self-beliefs either support or undermine you.
The dove is my emblem. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.
The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack.
Who is blind ? He who can see no other world. Who is dumb ? He who can say nothing pleasant about his lot. Who is poor ? He who is troubled with too many desires. Who is rich ? He who is happy with his lot.
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
Don't look back - forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience - then alone can great deeds be accomplished.
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.
Learning is definitely not mere imitation or the ability to accumulate and conform to fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery and never a concluding one. In JKD we begin not by accumulation but by discovering the cause of our ignorance, and oftentimes this involves a shedding process. Truth will not come until we have come to understand personally the whole process of the working of our being. After all, ultimately, knowledge in martial art simply means self-knowledge, and JKD can become intelligible only in the vigorous and constant process of self-inquiry and self-discovery.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg ? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Everything you want is on the other side of fear.
There's no such thing as not enough time if you're doing what you want to do.
The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
To ask the hard question is simple.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
No, this trick won't work... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love ?
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
You have the power to think what you want. No matter what the circumstance.
It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.