There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.
Tough times never last but tough people do.
It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
Your family and your love must be cultivated like a garden. Time, effort, and imagination must be summoned constantly to keep any relationship flourishing and growing.
A gentle hand may lead even an elephant by a single hair.
When you wholeheartedly adopt a 'with all your heart' attitude and go all out with the positive principle, you can do incredible things.
Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.
I want everyone to be the way I strive to become -- to be himself in his truth. Do not follow me, follow yourself ! is the existential challenge. Self-being awakens self-being but does not force itself on it.
What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail ?
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
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.
If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it.
People who are afraid to fail can never experience the joys of success.
The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport.
Stopping at third base adds no more runs than striking out.
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.
Every human heart is human.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
By asking the question " How can I afford it ? " your brain is put to work.
It is of practical value to learn to like yourself. Since you must spend so much time with yourself you might as well get some satisfaction out of the relationship.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
It helps to write down half a dozen things which are worrying me. Two of them, say, disappear, about two nothing can be done, so it's no use worrying, and two perhaps can be settled.
Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
It is better to bind your children to you by a feeling of respect and by gentleness, than by fear.
We have to go back to philosophy to treat things as they are. We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of god. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should god be blamed ?
Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
You can not escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.
Only in his own way and not in any other can the one who strives perfect himself. He who lays hold of the rung of his companion and lets go of his own rung, through him neither the one nor the other will be realized.
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Success isn't magic or hocus-pocus, it's simply learning to focus.
Learning acquired in youth is an inscription on stone.
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.
Whatever it takes !
If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
To succeed you need to find something to hold on to, something to motivate you, something to inspire you.
I am not sure I should have dared to start , but I am sure that I should not have dared to stop.
The true way to soften one's troubles is to solace those of others.
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
Understanding can overcome any situation, however mysterious or insurmountable it may appear to be.
To catch lots of fish, you must first go to the water. To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don't need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
I assume everybody thinks they're a top-five quarterback. I think I'm the best. I don't think I'm top five, I think I'm the best. I don't think I'd be very successful at my job if I didn't feel that way.
My friends are my estate.
It ain't over till it's over.
It is the surmounting of difficulties that make heroes.
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
When our actions do not, our fears make us traitors.
Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go, the sooner the better.
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities -- they're always there.
You see, it's never the environment ; it's never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events - how we interpret them - that shapes who we are today and who we'll become tomorrow. quotes
Each person's life is a story that is telling itself in the living.
Motivation is like food for the brain. You can not get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular refills.
Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.
The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor
If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.
God gives us our relatives - thank God we can choose our friends.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Every day in every way I am getting better and better.
Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.
It's easier to prepare and prevent, than to repair and repent.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
The broadest, and maybe the most meaningful definition of volunteering - Doing more than you have to because you want to, in a cause you consider good.
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.
Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing while it is still dark.
You do not lead by hitting people over the head -- that's assault, not leadership.
Don't dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal, nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
A mature man is his own judge. In the end, his only form of support is being faithful to his own convictions. The advice of others may be welcomed invaluable, but it does not free him from responsibility.
It's always darkest before the dawn.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.
If you want to reach a goal, you must see the reaching in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
is the greatest gift of the mind , it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
No matter how small, acknowledge the achievement.
To me, the idea and expectation that the day is slowly and surely coming when we will be able to honestly say we are our brother's keeper and not his oppressor is very beautiful.
Don't quit.