Change

Adapt, cope, remain flexible and foster a positive attitude amidst life's ups and downs.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Change Your Life.

https://www.vashtimagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Butterflies-in-cocoons-emerging.jpg

 Things You Can Do To Change Your Life



    You are constantly changing, but it’s hard to notice.

    It’s not even a question of if you’re changing. It’s a question of in which direction are you changing.


    Below are things you can do to change your life:

    Take small steps. Enjoy the process. Have fun.

    Know your Current Situation and where you want to go from there.  
    It helps to break big goals down into manageable steps.

    Be Patient 
    Endure

    Be determined to succeed.

    Face Your Fears

    No Excuses

    Take Responsibility

    Narrow Focus

    Read




    Change is inevitable. It’s all about in what direction you’re changing.



    Risk Failure.  You will make mistakes.

    And you won’t even know if they are mistakes when you make them, because mistakes and failures are skipping stones to success.



      

How to quit your life (and reboot): Priya Parker at TEDxUHasselt


 
Published on Dec 29, 2012
 
Many
people are doing jobs in fear; fear that they might not make the best
out of their lives. Priya Parker provides seven techniques to help you
quit your life and reboot.
She invites you to use these techniques to
explore the biggest needs in the world that you might have the passion
and the capacity to address.

Priya is an advisor to leaders and
organizations on strategy, vision and purpose. Her company, Thrive Labs,
works with individuals and teams to help them identify what they care
about most and align it with market realities. Her research includes
identifying what are the driving factors that lead people to thriving
and what blocks them from it. She helps organizations keep and grow
their culture and values as they scale. Drawing on 10 years of conflict
resolution facilitation in the United States, India and the Middle East,
Priya designs visioning and innovation labs that help organizations
grow from the root.

She has run her signature Labs for leading
global firms as well as startups from a variety of disciplines. Her
clients include disruptors from the fields of fashion, technology,
design, development, film, comedy and government. Priya is an expert in
innovative facilitation and process design and incorporates creative
visioning and movement techniques into her work. Her goal is to help
people spend more of their time building things that make them and
others come alive.

Priya received her B.A. in Political and
Social Thought at the University of Virginia, Phi Beta Kappa, and an
M.B.A. from MIT Sloan and an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School,
where she received the Public Service Fellowship.






Tips to Stay Smart, Sharp, and Focused

woman in playing violin

Tips to Stay Smart, Sharp, and Focused


Your daily habits can have a big impact on your memory, focus, and mood. Here's what to do to help keep your mind sharp.



 

Mix Things Up

Remember trying to talk backwards as a child? Researchers at Duke University created exercises they call "neurobics," which challenge your brain to think in new ways. Since your five senses are key to learning, use them to exercise your mind. If you're right-handed, try using your left hand. Drive to work by another route. Close your eyes and see if you can recognize food by taste.


Work Out to Stay Sharp

Exercise, especially the kind that gets your heart rate up like walking or swimming, has mental pluses, too. Although experts aren't sure why, physical activity might increase the blood supply to the brain and improve links between brain cells. Staying active can help memory, imagination, and even your ability to plan tasks.


A Healthy Diet Builds Brainpower

Do your brain a favor and choose foods that are good for your heart and waistline. Being obese in middle age makes you twice as likely to have dementia later on. High cholesterol and high blood pressure raise your chances, too. Try these easy tips:
  • Bake or grill foods instead of frying.
  • Cook with "good" fats like oils from nuts, seeds, and olives instead of cream, butter, and fats from meat.
  • Eat colorful fruits and veggies.


Watch What You Drink

You know that too many drinks can affect your judgment, speech, movement, and memory. But did you know alcohol can have long-term effects? Too much drinking over a long period of time can shrink the frontal lobes of your brain. And that damage can last forever, even if you quit drinking. A healthy amount is considered one drink a day for women and two for men.


 

Music Helps Your Brain

Thank your mom for making you practice the piano. Playing an instrument early in life pays off in clearer thinking when you're older. Musical experience boosts mental functions that have nothing to do with music, such as memory and ability to plan. It also helps with greater hand coordination. Plus, it's fun -- and it's never too late to start.


Make Friends for Your Mind

Be a people person! Talking with others actually sharpens your brain, whether at work, at home, or out in your community. Studies show social activities improve your mind. So volunteer, sign up for a class, or call a friend.


Stay Calm

Too much stress can hurt your gray matter, which contains cells that store and process information. Here are some ways to chill:
  • Take deep breaths.
  • Find something that makes you laugh.
  • Listen to music.
  • Try yoga or meditation.
  • Find someone to talk to.


Sleep and the Brain

Get enough sleep before and after you learn something new. You need sleep on both ends. When you start out tired, it's hard to focus on things. And when you sleep afterward, your brain files away the new info so you can recall it later. A long night's rest is best for memory and your mood. Adults need 7-8 hours of sleep every night.

Memory Helpers

Everybody spaces out now and then. As you get older, you may not remember things as easily as you used to. That's a normal part of aging. Some helpful hints:
  • Write things down.
  • Use the calendar and reminder functions in your phone, even for simple things (Call Dad!).
  • Focus on one task at a time.
  • Learn new things one step at a time.


The Name Game

Have trouble recalling names? Always repeat a person's name while you're talking to them -- at least in your head, if not out loud. Or invent a funny image or rhyme that you link with their name. For example, think of Bob bobbing out in the ocean.



Link: http://www.webmd.com/brain/ss/slideshow-fit-brains?ecd=wnl_men_120115&ctr=wnl-men-120115_nsl-ld-stry_desc&mb=%2fYEUKcm5jBiihqPGg%2fPGD2dEpmNqbUHLAOXXq3hWp98%3d

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Achieving Manageable, Meaningful Change


Intentional Change Theory


Achieving Manageable, Meaningful Change



Intentional Change Theory gives you the tools you need to transform yourself.

How many times have you tried to change something about yourself, only to find yourself slipping back into old habits?

Change is never easy, whether you're trying to change a behavior, an attitude, or your current circumstances.

The process is likely to be more "stop, start, stop, start" than the smooth transition you'd like it to be, as willpower flags and as other priorities vie for your attention.

Change is especially tough if you haven't wholly bought into it – for example, if you're trying to make a change that, deep down, you don't want to make, or if you're making a change that was designed for someone else and that doesn't fully align with your aspirations.

This is why it's helpful to create a personalized change plan. In this article, we'll look at Intentional Change Theory, a framework that you can use to create a change plan that is tailored to you – with your own unique strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, dreams, and support networks.

Note:

This article focuses on career-related change. However, you can apply Intentional Change Theory to personal goals, too: for example, you can use it for a diet or fitness plan, for home interests or study, or for changing a habit or belief that's holding you back.


About the Tool

Richard Boyatzis, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, developed Intentional Change Theory (ICT) as part of his work on individual and organizational change.

He published it in 2006 in the Journal of Management Development.

The theory outlines five common-sense steps that you need to follow if you want to make a lasting change within yourself. These five steps are:

Discover your ideal self.

Discover your real self.

Create your learning agenda.

Experiment with and practice new habits.

Get support.

From Boyatzis, R.E. (2006) 'An Overview of Intentional Change From a Complexity Perspective,' Journal of Management Development, Vol. 25, No. 7. Reproduced with permission of Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

These steps guide you through the process of mapping out your plans, putting them into practice, and making them part of your life.

Applying Intentional Change Theory

Let's look at each step in detail, and explore how to follow each one through.

1. Discover Your Ideal Self

There is often a gap between who we are and who we ultimately want to be. So, the first step in making an intentional change is to define your ideal self.

Start by forming a clear sense of what you'd like to achieve. Think about your hopes and aspirations, and clarify them into short- and long-term goals .

Pay attention to what excites you during this process. Discard goals that you don't feel enthusiastic about, and keep exploring until you find ones that you'd truly like to achieve. Remember that they might be drastically different from what you're doing now.

Write down all of your dreams, however far-fetched they seem. At this stage of the process, it's helpful to see all of your hopes and aspirations, even if you later decide that some of them are not immediately achievable.

Next, think about what kind of person you'd like to be. Be specific: would you like to have more empathy? Arrive at work with more energy? Have more patience? Visualize the person that you'd like to become in detail, and write this down.

Tip 1:

One way to motivate yourself during your period of change is to create a Treasure Map of your goals. Alternatively, you may find that a personal mission and vision statement inspires you.

Tip 2:

Our Life Plan Workbook ($) gives you a comprehensive framework for exploring and clarifying your life goals.


2. Discover Your Real Self

Your next step is to define your real self – the person you are right now. This can be a challenging step, because many of us have trouble seeing our strengths and weaknesses clearly. However, it's essential to uncover both the good and the bad: you'll struggle to reach your goal if you are not clear about your starting point.

Start by defining your own strengths and weaknesses. Use tools such as the StrengthsFinder , Personal SWOT Analysis , and Myers-Briggs to uncover more about your real self.

Alternatively, start with a simple list. What do you like most about yourself? What needs to change? Explore your current attitudes, assumptions, behaviors, and habits.

Also, ask for feedback from family, friends, colleagues, and your boss, explaining that you'd like their opinion on your strengths and weaknesses, so that you can work on these. Then use the Feedback Matrix to explore this feedback in more detail.
3. Create Your Learning Agenda

Now that you've defined who you are and who you'd like to be, you can create a "learning agenda" to align reality with the vision. Your learning agenda (also known as a personal development plan ) will also help you stay on track.

First, define what you need to do to move from your current self to your ideal self. Who can help you along this path? What resources do you need? Brainstorm the ways that you can access the information or training you need.

Then, identify your learning style . When you know this, you can learn more effectively – both on your own and in a group. For example, if you know that you prefer to learn by reflecting on information, schedule time to do this after a class or at the end of a study session.

Find a mentor or coach who can help you become your ideal self. This person might be a work colleague, friend, business associate, or professional coach.

Tip 1:

It's essential to do a reality check at this stage. There may be some changes that just aren't possible right now. Note these down on a "bigger picture" list of plans. You can work on these when your circumstances or resources change.

Tip 2:

You may be held back by a lack of time, or by conflicting demands. You can deal with this by focusing on a few changes at a time. Also, and where appropriate, embed your learning in your working life to help avoid frustration: our article on finding time for professional development outlines ways that you can fit learning into your schedule.


4. Experiment and Practice New Habits

Once you're heading in the right direction, it's time to practice. This will help you turn the changes you've made into new habits. Whether you're adopting a new skill, starting a micro-business, or changing an attitude or belief, do something – however small – every day that reinforces the changes you've made.

This step is also about experimenting – that is, finding stimulating ways to learn – and then testing your new knowledge, skills, or attitudes.

Tip:

Quick wins are an important source of motivation and self-confidence. For example, imagine that you're trying to be more patient with others. Find a small way to build your patience with your team every day.


5. Get Support

None of us gets far alone. Friends, family, colleagues, and our community can encourage us and give support that propels us through challenging times.

As you're going through the intentional change process, draw on the support of the people around you. Tell people you trust about what you want to do, and why you want to do it. Share your learning agenda, and ask for their support as you move forward.

Tip:

Remember, you're not the only person who's trying to change him- or herself positively. Build good work relationships by helping your colleagues with their own development: this way, you can give one-another support.

Key Points

Richard Boyatzis, a professor at Case Western Reserve University, created the Intentional Change Theory (ICT) and published it in the Journal of Management Development in 2006.

The model recommends that you use the following five steps to make a lasting change:

Discover your ideal self.
Discover your real self.
Create your learning agenda.
Experiment with and practice new habits.
Get support.

You can use the framework to customize your change process to suit your own life, learning style, and environment. However, change will only happen if you build small changes into your life, practice them to build new habits, and ask for support when you need it.


This site teaches you the skills you need for a happy and successful career; and this is just one of many tools and resources that you'll find here at Mind Tools.

 Subscribe to our free newsletter, or join the Mind Tools Club and really supercharge your career!

By Caroline Smith and the Mind Tools Team

Source: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/intentional-change-theory.htm



Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone:



12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: 
Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and 
Right Action

Whether it's called 'dry drunk' or 'white knuckle sobriety,' it's that stage in recovery when we realize that 'putting the plug in the jug' isn't enough. 

The next step is taking responsibility for the emotional immaturity that fuels our addictive personality and has a tremendous impact on ourselves and others.

In 12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone, Allen Berger, Ph.D., draws on the teachings of Bill W. and psychotherapy pioneers to offer twelve hallmarks of emotional sobriety that, when practiced, give people the confidence to be accountable for their behavior, ask for what they want and need, and grow and develop a deeper trust in the process of life. 

These 'smart things' include:

- Understanding who you are and what's important to you
- Learning not to take others' reactions personally
- Trusting your own inner compass
- Taking responsibility for your reactions to problematic situations

It is in these practices that we find release from what Bill W. described as an 'absolute dependency' on people or circumstances, and develop the tools to find prestige, security, and belonging within.

12 Smart Things to Do When the Booze and Drugs Are Gone: Choosing Emotional Sobriety through Self-Awareness and Right Action PDF Details:
Amazon Sales Rank: #18092 in Books
Published on: 2010-07-08
Released on: 2010-07-12
Original language: English
192 pages


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Women\'s Home Workout Bible PDF

Customer Review:

Most helpful customer reviewsAn Engaging Self-help book packed with
useful wisdom

By Judith S. Mishkin

This self-help book was engaging and packed with very useful wisdom for the audience for which it is intended. My copy is heavily highlighted and my little sticky notes makes the pages look like a fringed carpet. Dr. Berger uses his AA background and the 12 steps to help the reader learn about emotional sobriety.

His first chapter, Smart Thing 1: Know yourself--and How to Stay Centered sets the stage for a person's personal growth. He "help(s) us build up the courage and motivation to change the things we can. "

In the book, Dr. Berger uses quotations and ideas from the great pioneers of family therapy, such as Victor Frankl and Abraham Maslow.

Here are some examples and how Dr. Berger uses the material. From the ideas of Augustus Napier, PhD. and Carl Whitaker MD (page 139), Dr. Berger says "This means we choose a partner...to take the next step in our personal development."

He quotes Virginia Satir (page 156), "The problem is not the problem. The problem is coping (1972).

From Dr. Nathaniel Branden's sign "No one is coming", Dr. Berger says, and I paraphrase: "No one is coming to rescue (us) from their fate. It is up to (us)."

From a personal communication with Dr. Kempler, he quotes on page 52, "In order to get more personal, you have to stop taking the other person's behavior personally." (1982)

From "A psychological technique called neurolinguistic programming," (page 116), Dr. Berger talks about

1. Change our focus,

2. Change our language (What we say to ourselves) and

3. Change our physiology (Try smiling)."


Dr. Berger has only one exercise, "The Emotional Sobriety Inventory Form," which he asks the reader to fill out near the beginning of the book and again at the end. It is the only exercise I have ever done since I left school! The book is definitely worth reading.

Judith Mishkin, Marriage and Family Counselor, retired.

I am not one to write reviews, but I felt compelled to do so here. Dr. Berger has hit the nail right on the head with this book!!! I have just celebrated 1 year of sobriety, and have begun incorporating numerous aspects of his book into my life--understanding who I am and what is important to me. I have given this book as a gift to a countless number of friends and family both in 12 step recovery and not. In my opinion, 12 Smart Things holds gifts that can benefit ANYONE'S emotional sobriety.


By D. Cella

Clear, concise, simple guidelines that are easy to remember and incorporate into everyday routines. This is Berger's second book and I love this book as much as the first one. He breaks down how to achieve emotional sobriety into short and easy points to use everyday.



read books online pdf

Link: http://readbooksonlinepdf3.blogspot.ca/2012/08/12-smart-things-to-do-when-booze-and.html


Fools Repeat their Folly


There is no further education to be gained by a second kick of a mule.  



The Success Principles by Jack Canfield

We can learn to have priorities and goals to grow from our current situation to the life we want.




Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Daniel Dennett on Tools To Transform Our Thinking

Published on May 29, 2013
http://www.intelligencesquared.com/ev...

Filmed at the Royal Geographical Society on 22nd May 2013.

Daniel Dennett is one of the world's most original and provocative thinkers. A philosopher and cognitive scientist, he is known as one of the 'Four Horseman of New Atheism' along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens.

On May 22nd he came to Intelligence Squared to share the insights he has acquired over his 40-year career into the nature of how we think, decide and act. Dennett revealed his favourite thinking tools, or 'intuition pumps', that he and others have developed for addressing life's most fundamental questions. As well as taking a fresh look at familiar moves -- Occam's Razor, reductio ad absurdum -- he discussed new cognitive solutions designed for the most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, consciousness and free will.

By acquiring these tools and learning to use them wisely, we can all aspire to better understand the world around us and our place in it.




Three Myths of Behavior Change - What You Think You Know That You Don't:...

Published on Mar 20, 2013
Jeni Cross is a sociology professor at Colorado State University. She has spoken about community development and sustainability to audiences across the country, from business leaders and government officials to community activists. As a professor and consultant she has helped dozens of schools and government agencies implement and evaluate successful programs to improve community well-being. In this talk, she discusses her work around changing behaviors. 




Thursday, October 1, 2015

The Neuroscience of Happiness

Uploaded on Jul 1, 2011

Is happiness a skill? Modern neuroscientific research and the wisdom of ancient contemplative traditions converge in suggesting that happiness is the product of skills that can be enhanced through training and such training exemplifies how transforming the mind can change the brain. 

Kent Berridge, Richie Davidson, and Daniel Gilbert speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival
.





Inspiring talk by Earl Nightingale and transcript



 This is a transcript...

The Strangest Secret

 

Transcribed from The Strangest Secret audio program by Earl Nightingale


Some years ago, the late Nobel prize-winning Dr. Albert Schweitzer was asked by a reporter, “Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?” The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, “Men simply don’t think!”

It’s about this that I want to talk with you. We live today in a golden age. This is an era that humanity has looked forward to, dreamed of, and worked toward for thousands of years. We live in the richest era that ever existed on the face of the earth … a land of abundant opportunity for everyone.

However, if you take 100 individuals who start even at the age of 25, do you have any idea what will happen to those men and women by the time they’re 65? These 100 people believe they’re going to be successful. They are eager toward life, there is a certain sparkle in their eye, an erectness to their carriage, and life seems like a pretty interesting adventure to them.

But by the time they’re 65, only one will be rich, four will be financially independent, five will still be working, and 54 will be broke and depending on others for life’s necessities.

Only five out of 100 make the grade! Why do so many fail? What has happened to the sparkle that was there when they were 25? What has become of the dreams, the hopes, the plans … and why is there such a large disparity between what these people intended to do and what they actually accomplished?

THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

First, we have to define success and here is the best definition I’ve ever been able to find:

“Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.”

A success is the school teacher who is teaching because that’s what he or she wants to do. A success is the entrepreneur who start his own company because that was his dream and that’s what he wanted to do. A success is the salesperson who wants to become the best salesperson in his or her company and sets forth on the pursuit of that goal.

A success is anyone who is realizing a worthy predetermined ideal, because that’s what he or she decided to do … deliberately. But only one out of 20 does that! The rest are “failures.”

Rollo May, the distinguished psychiatrist, wrote a wonderful book called Man’s Search for Himself, and in this book he says: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice … it is conformity.” And there you have the reason for so many failures. Conformity and people acting like everyone else, without knowing why or where they are going.

We learn to read by the time we’re seven. We learn to make a living by the time we’re 30. Often by that time we’re not only making a living, we’re supporting a family. And yet by the time we’re 65, we haven’t learned how to become financially independent in the richest land that has ever been known. Why? We conform! Most of us are acting like the wrong percentage group and the 95 who don’t succeed.

GOALS

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and why others don’t seem to work hard, yet seem to get everything? They seem to have the “magic touch.” You’ve heard people say, “Everything he touches turns to gold.” Have you ever noticed that a person who becomes successful tends to continue to become more successful? And, on the other hand, have you noticed how someone who’s a failure tends to continue to fail?

The difference is goals. 

People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. 

Failures, on the other hand, believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances … by things that happen to them … by exterior forces.
Think of a ship with the complete voyage mapped out and planned. The captain and crew know exactly where the ship is going and how long it will take and it has a definite goal. And 9,999 times out of 10,000, it will get there.

Now let’s take another ship and just like the first and only let’s not put a crew on it, or a captain at the helm. Let’s give it no aiming point, no goal, and no destination. We just start the engines and let it go. I think you’ll agree that if it gets out of the harbor at all, it will either sink or wind up on some deserted beach and a derelict. It can’t go anyplace because it has no destination and no guidance.

It’s the same with a human being. However, the human race is fixed, not to prevent the strong from winning, but to prevent the weak from losing. Society today can be likened to a convoy in time of war. The entire society is slowed down to protect its weakest link, just as the naval convoy has to go at the speed that will permit its slowest vessel to remain in formation.

That’s why it’s so easy to make a living today. It takes no particular brains or talent to make a living and support a family today. We have a plateau of so-called “security.” So, to succeed, all we must do is decide how high above this plateau we want to aim.

Throughout history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things. It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement and the key to success and the key to failure is this:

WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

This is The Strangest Secret! Now, why do I say it’s strange, and why do I call it a secret? Actually, it isn’t a secret at all. It was first promulgated by some of the earliest wise men, and it appears again and again throughout the Bible. But very few people have learned it or understand it. That’s why it’s strange, and why for some equally strange reason it virtually remains a secret.

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” 

He continues, ” … only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

My old friend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.” 

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t 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 can’t find them, make them.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it?   We become what we think about. 

A person who is thinking about a concrete and worthwhile goal is going to reach it, because that’s what he’s thinking about. 

Conversely, the person who has no goal, who doesn’t know where he’s going, and whose thoughts must therefore be thoughts of confusion, anxiety, fear, and worry will thereby create a life of frustration, fear, anxiety and worry. And if he thinks about nothing … he becomes nothing.


AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP

The human mind is much like a farmer’s land. The land gives the farmer a choice. He may plant in that land whatever he chooses. The land doesn’t care what is planted. It’s up to the farmer to make the decision. 

The mind, like the land, will return what you plant, but it doesn’t care what you plant. If the farmer plants too seeds and one a seed of corn, the other nightshade, a deadly poison, waters and takes care of the land, what will happen?

Remember, the land doesn’t care. It will return poison in just as wonderful abundance as it will corn. So up come the two plants and one corn, one poison as it’s written in the Bible, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

The human mind is far more fertile, far more incredible and mysterious than the land, but it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant … success … or failure. A concrete, worthwhile goal … or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. But what we plant it must return to us.


The problem is that our mind comes as standard equipment at birth. It’s free. And things that are given to us for nothing, we place little value on. Things that we pay money for, we value.

The paradox is that exactly the reverse is true. 

Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free and our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family and children and friends and country. All these priceless possessions are free.

But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if our home burns down, we can rebuild it. But the things we got for nothing, we can never replace.

Our mind can do any kind of job we assign to it, but generally speaking, we use it for little jobs instead of big ones. 


So decide now. What is it you want? Plant your goal in your mind. It’s the most important decision you’ll ever make in your entire life.

Do you want to excel at your particular job? Do you want to go places in your company … in your community? Do you want to get rich?

All you have got to do is plant that seed in your mind, care for it, work steadily toward your goal, and it will become a reality.

It not only will, there’s no way that it cannot. You see, that’s a law and like the laws of Sir Isaac Newton, the laws of gravity. If you get on top of a building and jump off, you’ll always go down and you’ll never go up.

And it’s the same with all the other laws of nature. They always work. They’re inflexible. 

Think about your goal in a relaxed, positive way. 

Picture yourself in your mind’s eye as having already achieved this goal. 

See yourself doing the things you will be doing when you have reached your goal.

Every one of us is the sum total of our own thoughts. 

We are where we are because that’s exactly where we really want or feel we deserve to be and whether we’ll admit that or not. 

Each of us must live off the fruit of our thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow and next month and next year and will mold your life and determine your future. You’re guided by your mind.

I remember one time I was driving through e a s t e r n Arizona and I saw one of those giant earth-moving machines roaring along the road with what looked like 30 tons of dirt in it and a tremendous, incredible machine and and there was a little man perched way up on top with the wheel in his hands, guiding it.

As I drove along I was struck by the similarity of that machine to the human mind. 

Just suppose you’re sitting at the controls of such a vast source of energy. 

Are you going to sit back and fold your arms and let it run itself into a ditch?

Or are you going to keep both hands firmly on the wheel and control and direct this power to a specific, worthwhile purpose? 

It’s up to you. You’re in the driver’s seat. 

You see, the very law that gives us success is a double-edged sword. 

We must control our thinking. 

The same rule that can lead people to lives of success, wealth, happiness, and all the things they ever dreamed of and that very same law can lead them into the gutter. 

It’s all in how they use it … for good or for bad. 

That is The Strangest Secret!

Do what the experts since the dawn of recorded history have told us to do:

pay the price, by becoming the person you want to become. 

It’s not nearly as difficult as living unsuccessfully.

The moment you decide on a goal to work toward, you’re immediately a successful person 
and you are then in that rare group of people who know where they’re going. 

Out of every hundred people, you belong to the top five. 

Don’t concern yourself too much with how you are going to achieve your goal.

 Leave that completely to a power greater than yourself. 

All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord, and at the right time.

Start today. You have nothing to lose and but you have your whole life to win.



30-DAY ACTION IDEAS FOR PUTTING THE STRANGEST SECRET TO WORK FOR YOU:

For the next 30-days follow each of these steps every day until you have achieved your goal.

1. Write on a card what it is you want more that anything else
. It may be more money. Perhaps you’d like to double your income or make a specific amount of money. It may be a beautiful home. It may be success at your job. It may be a particular position in life. It could be a more harmonious family.

Write down on your card specifically what it is you want. Make sure it’s a single goal and clearly defined. 
You needn’t show it to anyone, but carry it with you so that you can look at it several times a day. 

Think about it in a cheerful, relaxed, positive way each morning when you get up, and immediately you have something to work for and something to get out of bed for, something to live for.

Look at it every chance you get during the day and just before going to bed at night. 


As you look at it, remember that you must become what you think about, and since you’re thinking about your goal, you realize that soon it will be yours. In fact, it’s really yours the moment you write it down and begin to think about it.

2. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. 

Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your mind, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal. 

And there will come a time when you’ll feel like giving up. It’s easier for a human being to think negatively than positively. That’s why only five percent are successful! You must begin now to place yourself in that group.

“Act as though it were impossible to fail,” as Dorothea Brande said. No matter what your goal, if you’ve kept your goal before you every day, you’ll wonder and marvel at this new life you’ve found.


3. Your success will always be measured by the quality and quantity of service you render. 

Most people will tell you that they want to make money, without understanding this law. The only people who make money work in a mint. The rest of us must earn money. This is what causes those who keep looking for something for nothing, or a free ride, to fail in life. 

Success is not the result of making money; earning money is the result of success and and success is in direct proportion to our service.

Most people have this law backwards. It’s like the man who stands in front of the stove and says to it: “Give me heat and then I’ll add the wood.” 

How many men and women do you know, or do you suppose there are today, who take the same attitude toward life? There are millions.

We’ve got to put the fuel in before we can expect heat. 


Likewise, we’ve got to be of service first before we can expect money

Don’t concern yourself with the money. Be of service … build … work … dream … create! Do this and you’ll find there is no limit to the prosperity and abundance that will come to you.

Don’t start your test until you’ve made up your mind to stick with it. If you should fail during your first 30 days and by that I mean suddenly find yourself overwhelmed by negative thoughts and simply start over again from that point and go 30 more days.

Gradually, your new habit will form, until you find yourself one of that wonderful minority to whom virtually nothing is impossible.

Above all … don’t worry! Worry brings fear, and fear is crippling. 


The only thing that can cause you to worry during your test is trying to do it all yourself

Know that all you have to do is hold your goal before you; everything else will take care of itself.

Take this 30-day test, then repeat it … then repeat it again. Each time it will become more a part of you until you’ll wonder how you could have ever have lived any other way.

Live this new way and the floodgates of abundance will open and pour over you more riches than you may have dreamed existed. Money? Yes, lots of it. 

But what’s more important, you’ll have peace … you’ll be in that wonderful minority who lead calm, cheerful, successful lives.



Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.
The Strangest Secret
The Strangest Secret Article by: Earl Nightingale


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Learn more about Earl Nightingale and his many timeless books and audio programs.

The Strangest Secret - Advantedge Article By Earl Nightingale

LINK:  http://www.nightingale.com/ae_article~i~22~article~strangestsecret.aspx


The Strangest Secret Earl Nightingale Conant 1950's Origional FULL 31:35 Min.
31:35 - 4 years ago
Earl Nightingale Conant The Strangest Secret 1956 1950's

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Is it time to move on?



The first step to getting anywhere is deciding you're no longer willing to stay where you are. 
-Unknown

 

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Why Change


“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” – William Faulkner


"Acceptance makes an incredible fertile soil for the seeds of change."
- Steve Maraboli


“If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living. 
- Anatole France

Monday, July 13, 2015

Progress requires Change

 "He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." 
– Harold Wilson

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
– Benjamin Franklin.



Monday, May 25, 2015

Inspirational quotes


"If we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed" (Carl Sagan)

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"
(Albert Szent-Gyorgyi)

"The best way to predict your future is to create it" (Peter Drucker)

"Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who has the better imaginary friend" (Napoleon)

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born" (Antonio Gramsci)

"Education is paradoxical in that it is largely composed of things that cannot be learned" (Roberto Calasso)

"Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."
(Miguel de Cervantes)

"The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error." (Karl Popper)

"The task is...not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees" (Erwin Schroedinger)

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible" (Maurits Cornelis Escher)

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes"
(Marcel Proust)

"A man wants what a woman has sex. He can steal it (rape), persuade her to give it away (seduction), rent it (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States) or own it outright (marriage in most societies)" (Andrea Dworkin)

"A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all" (Tacitus)

"God is a hacker, not an engineer" (Francis Crick)

"Not to be mad is another form of madness" (Blaise Pascal)

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes" (Oscar Wilde)

"We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience" (George Bernard Shaw)

"Experience is not what happens to a man, it is what a man does with what happens to him" (Aldous Huxley)

"No one believes in God any more, but everyone believes in Bach" (composer Mauricio Kagel)

"To leave is to arrive and to arrive is to leave" (Yong-Kyun Bae)

"Hell is other people" (Sartre)

"There's no such thing as information overload. There's only filter failure." (Clay Shirky)

"... the death of the spirit which threatens every man unless he is conscious of the danger and has a real purpose which can keep it alive and enable it to thrust its way through the choking weeds and thorns to the air and to the sun" (Hugh Trevor-Roper)

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine." (Henry Louis Mencken)

"The hallmark of a deep explanation is that it answers more than you ask" (Max Tegmark)

"I think people who write programs do have at least a glimmer of extra insight into the nature of God... because creating a program often means that you have to create a small universe" (Don Knuth)

"It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation." (Vladimir Putin)

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" (Voltaire)

"Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too" (Heinrich Heine)

"The goal of the future is full unemployment (Arthur Clarke)

"We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like" (Dave Ramsey)

"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans" (Allen Saunders, 1957)

"To find something interesting you merely have to look at it long enough" (Flaubert)

"Science is always wrong - It never solves a problem without creating 10 more" (George-Bernard Shaw)

"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations" (Henry Thoreau)

"There is no position so absurd that some philosopher has not held it" (James Fetzer)

"A little rebellion every now and then is a good thing" (Thomas Jefferson)

"It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility for service, for news, for entertainment, for education and for vital commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter" (Herbert Hoover talking about the radio in 1922).

"In 3000 AD one will doubtless be able to travel from Kansas City to Peking in a few hours. But if the civilization of these two places is the same, there will be no object in doing so." (Aldous Huxley in 1926)

"Humans - who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals - have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain." (Carl Sagan)

"Radio broadcasting is a sort of cleansing instrument for the mind just as the bathtub is for the body"
(David Sarnoff at RCA in the 1920s).

"There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal" (Henry Ford)

"The entire Earth will be converted into a huge brain" (Nikolas Tesla, talking about the radio in 1904)

"Every monument of civilization is a monument of barbarism" (Walter Benjamin)

"Now the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room" (David Weinberger)

"Learn to appreciate what you have, before time makes you appreciate what you had" (Robert Downey)

"Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other" (Oscar Ameringer)

"Better to understand very little than to misunderstand a lot" (one-liner signature file on the internet)

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left" (Bertrand Russell)

"People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does" (Michel Foucault)

"There is something not-there there" (Terrence Deacon)

"I'm dying, but so are you" (Christopher Hitchens, dying of cancer)

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

"Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly" (Dalai Lama)

"Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it" (Dalai Lama)

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." (Mahatma Gandhi)

"I Seem To Be a Verb" (Buckminster Fuller)

"An optimist is someone who doesn't quite understand the problem" (Steve Kaufman)

"When you are invited to a dinner, you are either a guest or you are part of a menu" (Guy Verhofstadt)

"If you torture statistics long enough, they'll eventually confess the truth" (Alan Simpson)

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" (Lao Tzu)

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas - I'm frightened of the old ones" (John Cage)

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn" (Alvin Toffler)

"Begin Anywhere" (John Cage)

"The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rulers - It's the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments - Too bad we've forgotten how to do it" (Neal Stephenson)

"Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once" (John Wheeler)

"An investor who has all the answers doesn't even understand the questions" (John Templeton)

"The worst labyrinth is not that intricate form that can entrap us forever, but a single and precise straight line" (Borges)

"I have been everything and it is worth nothing" (Roman emperor Septimius Severus)

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done" (Alan Turing)

"Contentment is rare among men as it is natural among animals" (Will Durant)

"Mankind's ability to understand and control the forces of nature greatly exceeds our ability to govern ourselves" (George Soros)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it" (Upton Sinclair)

"We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom" (Edward Osborne Wilson)

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding" (Khalil Gibran)

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting" (Charles Bukowski)

"Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed" (Samuel Johnson)

"I don't do drugs - I am drugs" (Salvador Dali)

"Love that is not madness is not love" (Pedro Calderon de la Barca)

"When a man suffers from delusions he is described as mad but when a million do so they belong to a world religion" (Anthony Storr)

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable -There is another theory which states that this has already happened" (Douglas Adams)

"If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians" (Warren Buffett)

"The world is a playground" (Indian-Persian poet Ghalib)

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition" (Timothy Leary)

"You are all you've got" (Janis Joplin)

"Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent" (Eleanor Roosevelt)

"If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman" (Margaret Thatcher)

"Be like a flower that gives fragrance, even to the hand that crushes it" (Ali ibn Abi Talib)

"If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married" (Katherine Hepburn)

"When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping - Men invade another country - It's a whole different way of thinking" (Elayne Boosler)

"There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper" (Camille Paglia)

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun" (Katherine Hepburn)

"Poor clowns of the absolute, we forget that we act out a tragedy to enliven the boredom of one spectator whose applause has never reached a mortal ear" (Ciorin)

"O you proud Christians, wretched souls and small,/ Who by the dim lights of your twisted minds/ Believe you prosper even as you fall,/ Can you not see that we are worms, each one/ Born to become the angelic butterfly/ That flies defenseless to the Judgement Throne?" (Dante, Canto 10, Purgatorio)

"God doesn't vote" (Former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti justifying his dirty political methods despite being a very religious man)

"If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours" (John Maynard Keynes)

"During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it" (Margaret Thatcher)

"Wait and see" (Albert Einstein, answering the question what's going to happen to the universe?)

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" (Lord Kelvin in 1895)

"Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now - They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are" (Bill Gates)

"There is a world market for maybe five computers" (Thomas Watson of IBM in 1943)

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value" (French general Ferdinand Foch in 1913)

"Hell is the truth seen too late" (Thomas Hobbes)

"We inhabit a universe that is still inventing itself" (Peter Corning)

"No poem is intended for the reader, no painting for the beholder, no symphony for the listener" (Walter Benjamin)

"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings" (Robert Burns)

"There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing" (Robert Burns)

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" (Albert Einstein)

"Yvonne: Where were you last night? = Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember - Yvonne: Will I see you tonight? - Rick: I never make plans that far ahead" (Curtiz's film Casablanca)

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood - Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less" (Marie Curie)

"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process" (Edward Bernays)

"Nature has all the answers, so what is your question?" (Howard Odum)

"There can be no true friends without true enemies" (Michael Dibdin)

"Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor" (the Pirate to Alexander the Great in St Augustine's City of God)

"The more laws and orderre made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be" (Lao Tze)

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" (Benjamin Franklin)

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do" (Bertrand Russell)

"Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind (Bernard Baruch)

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order" (Alfred North Whitehead)

"Failure is the foundation of success - Success is the foundation of failure" (Lao Tze)

"Wer immer strebend sich bemuht, Den konnen wir erlosen/ Whoever exerts himself in constant striving, Him we can save" (Goethe, Faust)

"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do" (Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

"Every journey of 10,000 li starts with the first step" (Chinese proverb)

"I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library" (Jorge Luis Borges)

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal" (Albert Einstein)

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new" (Albert Einstein)

"It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches the mice" (Deng Xiaoping)

"I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic" (JG Ballard)

"The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time" (Edward-Osborne Wilson)

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do" (Benjamin Franklin)

"Truths are more likely to be discovered by one man than by a nation" (Descartes)

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" (James Joyce)

"He who follows another will never overtake him" (Michelangelo)

"The impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred" (Balzac)

"Esse Est Percipi/ To be is to be perceived" (Bishop Berkeley)

"A believer is a stranger in this world" (Al-Hasan al-Basri)

"Change has rarely ever changed things" (Walter Sorrell)

"We've learned how to make a living, but not a life" (George Carlin)

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it" (Chinese proverb)

"There are no inevitabilities in history" (Paul Johnson)

"When goods don't cross borders, armies will" (Frederic Bastiat)

"A junkie is someone who uses their body to tell society that something is wrong" (Stella Adler)

"While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die" (Leonardo da Vinci)

"While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one" (Jorge Luis Borges)

"The difference between me and a madman is that i am not mad" (Salvador Dali)

"All truth passes through three stages - First, it is ridiculed - Second, it is violently opposed - Third, it is accepted as being self-evident" (Arthur Schopenhauer)

"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life" (Frank Zappa)

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him" (Carl Jung)

"If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you" (Friedrich Nietzsche)

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them" (Albert Einstein)

"Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary" (Blaise Pascal)

"Democrats have become very good at electing very bad Republicans" (Ralph Nader)

"Revolutions are always verbose" (Leon Trotsky)

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh" (Voltaire)

"Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something" (Anton Chekhov)

"You are mistaken if you think that your customer is paying you to have sex with him -He is also paying you to go away after the sex is over" (Anonymous prostitute quoted in a Leonard Shlain book)

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it" (George Santayana)

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect" (Mark Twain)

"Men have become the tools of their tools" (Henry Thoreau)

"If God made us in His image, we have certainly returned the compliment" (Voltaire)

"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading" (Lao Tzu)

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful" (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

"Everything should be as simple as possible - but no simpler" (Albert Einstein)

"Most books are about aspects of human knowledge - Few people write books about human ignorance, despite the fact that there would be much more to write about" (Piero Scaruffi)

"Nasrudin sat on a river bank when someone shouted to him from the opposite side: Hey! how do I get across? - Nasrudin shouted back: You are across!" (Popular Turkish tale)

"No amount of study of present forms [of life] would permit us to infer [the existence of] dinosaurs" (Max Delbruck)

"There is no substitute for victory" (Douglas MacArthur)

"Somewhere something incredible is waiting to happen" (John Wheeler)

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known" (Carl Sagan)

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public" (H.L. Mencken)

"Ekam sat vipra bahuda vadanti/ The one truth is called by different names by various learned men" (Rig Veda)

"God does not exist - He is being itself beyond essence and existence - Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him" (Paul Tillich)

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing" (Wernher Von Braun)

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day - Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" (Lao Tzu)

"I do not believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use" (Galileo Galilei)

"The Brain is wider than the Sky / For put them side by side / The one the other will contain" (Emily Dickinson)

"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced" (Frank Zappa)

"Congressmen are like diapers - You need to change them often, and for the same reason" (Pete McCloskey)

"I think I know what it is but don't ask me to play it" (John Coltrane to Zita Carno on seeing one of his improvisations transcribed to music notation)

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" (Josef Stalin)

"The foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer" (Oscar Wilde)

"No one really knows enough to be a pessimist" (Norman Cousins)

"Life is a question in the form of an answer" (Piero Scaruffi)

"Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught" (Oscar Wilde)

"I would characterize current US nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous" (former USA defense secretary Robert McNamara)

"Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth" (Archimedes)

"We only had our brains to use as weapons against the Christians" (A Jewish friend, when i asked him why so many Jews became scientists and artists and writers - Contrast it with a very similar statement made by an Al Jazeera commentator regarding suicide bombers: The Arabs only have their bodiesto use as weapons against Israel and the USA)

"Sometimes the metaphors write themselves" (Eugene Robinson, 2006)

"All murderers are punished unless they kill in great numbers" (Voltaire)

"Je ne suis pas d'accord avec ce que vous dites, mais je d‚fendrai jusqu'… la mort le droit que vous avez de le dire/ I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" (Voltaire)

"It is better to kill one hundred innocents than to let one guilty person go" (Dolores Ibarruri La Pasionaria)

"There is a limit to human intelligence, but there is no limit to human stupidity" (Piero Scaruffi)

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them - But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being - And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement - The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth" (Niels Bohr)

"La lor cieca vita e` tanto bassa, che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte - Fama di loro esser non lassa; misericordia e giustizia li sdegna - Non ti curar di lor, ma guarda e passa/ Their pointless life is so low that all other lots they envy - Fame of them the world hath none; Mercy and Justice scorn them both - Ignore them, look ahead and pass them by" (Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III)

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time - And all our yesterdays have lighted fools, The way to dusty death - Out, out brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more - It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing" (William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5)

"Envy is blind, and she has no other quality than that of detracting from virtue" (Titus Livius)

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" (Winston Churchill)

"There are known knowns: there are things we know we know - We also know there are known unknowns: we know there are some things we do not know - But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know that we don't know" (Donald Rumsfeld)

"A scientist is someone who learns more and more about less and less, and ultimately knows everything about nothing - A Philosopher is someone who learns less and less about more and more, and ultimately knows nothing about everything" (Anonymous joke)

"Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?" (Groucho Marx)

"The beaver told the rabbit as they stared at the Hoover Dam: No, I didn't build it myself, but it's based on an idea of mine" (Charles Townes)

"Time is the substance of which we are made" (Borges)

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist - Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew - Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant - Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me" (Reverend Martin Niemoller, 1945)

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think" (Adolf Hitler)

"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed" (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf)

"Karl Radek: Vladimir Ilyich, where are we going to get enough rope to hang the whole bourgeoisie? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: They will sell it to us themselves

"It is reasonable to expect that, with the favourable effects of time, and of European arts and sciences, [America] will become the most formidable power in the world" (the Venetian ambassador to Paris, 1783)

"Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found together" (Gandhi)

"A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends" (Charles De Gaulle)

"Life is not a journey, it is a destination" (Piero Scaruffi)

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies" (Groucho Marx)

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, and we achieved neither" (Condoleeza Rice)

"We are not shooting enough professors" (Lenin)

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist" (George Orwell)

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" (Mahatma Gandhi)

"I thank my parents for the greatest gift of all: poverty" (Robert Benigni)

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it" (Winston Churchill)

"The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking" (Martin Heidegger)

"You were born with wings - Why prefer to crawl through life?" (Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

"Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians" (Charles De Gaulle)

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world" (Mahatma Gandhi)

"This whole world Is one big prison yard - Some of us are prisoners The rest of us are guards" (Bob Dylan)

"The past is not dead - it isn't even past" (Christa Wolf, 1976)

"I think it would be a good idea" (Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization)

"God is dead - Nietzsche/ Nietzsche is dead - God" (Graffiti on Nietzsche's tomb)

"Philosophy has only interpreted the world - The real challenge is to change it" (Epigraph on Karl Marx tomb)

"It will take a thousand years for the frontier to reach the Pacific" ( Thomas Jefferson)

"A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere" (Groucho Marx)

"Like all religions, Reason presents itself as the solution to the problems it has created" (John Ralston Saul, 1992)

"The Army causes Taxes; Taxes cause Discontents; and Discontents make an Army necessaryLord Bath, 1749)

"To do is to be - Descartes; To be is to do - Voltaire; Do be do be do - Frank Sinatra" (Men'w Restrooms, Greasewood Flats, Scottsdale)

"I told him to be fruitful and multiply, but not in those words" (Woody Allen)

"I play the notes, in order, as they are written - It is God who makes the music" (Johan Sebastian Bach)

"The first thing that we do let's kill all the lawyers" (Henry VI, II/4, Shakespeare)

"The difference between a psychiatric patient and a psychiatric doctor is that the former gets better" (paraphrasing a line in Vincent Minnelli's Cowbweb)

"Under no circumstances should a true Christian draw the sword" (Tertullian, 2nd century AD)

"The basis of government is jugglery - If it lasts and works, it becomes policy" (Caliph Al Mansur of Baghdad)

"The worst things are those that are novelties - Every innovation is an error, and every error leads to hell" (Prophet Mohammed, The Neglected Duty)

"shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi = the master is fond of licking lion spittle" (Chinese tonguetwister)

"I am who I am" (God to Moses)

"Jesus: I came into the world to bear witness to the truth - Pilate: What is truth?" (John 18:3438)

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?" (Hakuin)

"Four blind men gave four altogether contradictory descriptions of an elephant because one had been able to touch only its tail, the other its legs, the third its belly and the fourth its ears only" (Ancient Arab proverb)

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" (Winston Churchill)

"There is nothing more dangerous than a philosopher who wants to change the world" (Piero Scaruffi)

"Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy" (Jorge-Luis Borges)

"Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets" (Napoleon Bonaparte)

"Quote me as saying that I was mis-quoted" (Groucho Marx)