Smart People's Quotes

[artrenegade]

"Light yourself on fire, and people will come to watch you burn."

Think of the last time you took a massive action on something. That action created results, and those results attracted attention. The next time you take something on, light yourself on fire. It's the only way to fly.

[Dan.Linehan]

If they're standing close to each other, the world is good.

- Randy Pausch

[machoman]

This is a very thought provoking quote. Here it is.


Winners vs losers

The winner is always the part of the answer;
The loser is always the part of the problem.

The winner always has a program;
The loser always have an excuse.

The winner says,"Let me do it for you";
The loser says,"That's not my job".

The winner sees an answer for every problem;
The loser sees a problem for every answer.

The winner says,"It may be difficult but it is possible";
The loser says,"It may be possible but it is too difficult"

When a winner makes a mistake,he says," I was wrong";
When a loser makes a mistake,he says,"It wasn't my fault".

A winner makes commitments;
A loser makes promises.

Winners have dreams;
Losers have schemes.

Winners say,"I must do something";
Losers say,"Something must be done".

Winners are the part of the team;
Loser are apart from the team.

Winners see the gain;
Losers see the pain.

Winners see the possibilities;
Losers see the problems.

Winners believe in win/win/;
Losers believe for them to win someone else has to lose.

Winners see the potential;
Losers see the past.

Winners are like thermostat;
Loser are like thermometers.

Winners chose what they say;
Losers say what they choose.

Winners use soft words but hard arguments;
Losers use hard words but soft arguments.

Winners stand firm on values but compromise on pretty things;
Losers stand firm on pretty things but compromise on values.

Winners follow the philosophy of empathy:"Don't do to others what you would not want them to do to you";
Losers follow the philosophy,"Do it to others before they do it to you".

Winners make it happen;
Losers let it happen.

Winners plan and prepare to win. The key word is preparation

-Shiv Khera, author of You Can Win

[Stephen]

'Run for your lives...................................'

[danman85]

"If I'm looking for a lawyer, I have to shake their hands. If their hands are as soft as a baby's bottom, they're hired."

-My grandfather

[mercuryrising]

"Your intention is to live in each instant."

- Shunryu Suzuki

[Lanya]

Originally Posted by Garrison Keillor

Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it.

[danman85]

I am whatever you say I am
If I wasn't, then why would you say I am?

-Eminem

[wachusettgirl]

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream."
Mark Twain

[inquiringmind4u]

Good timing…. I just finished cataloging a bunch of my favorite quotes. I’ll have to split this in two, but here are some of my favorites from Vernon Howard. Hope you enjoy them...

• You are free when you do not know what to do with yourself and it does not make you nervous.

• We do not dislike another person, rather, we dislike the inner storm we imagine he caused.

• We fear we might be wrong about something, not seeing that conceding wrongness makes us both right and free of fear!

• Patiently let life happen as it wishes, for an anxious attempt to not miss anything makes you miss everything.

• What you want is right in front of you at this very moment, so develop your inner eyesight.

• It is a man's own thought that connects him, rightly or wrongly, with other people and events.

• Egotism is the illusory belief that labels, experiences, habits, plans, and possessions constitute a real and permanent self.

• A person is chained to others because he is not free of himself.

• If you feel threatened by the devil, you are the devil.

• End self-division by doing what is right for your true life, not what others insist is right for you.

• To truly have a life of his own an individual must voluntarily abandon what he now calls a life of his own.

• True independence, and Oneness with the All, are the same thing.

• A wasted day is one in which you fail to hear messages coming from a higher source than yourself.

• Your true identity cannot be described with thoughts, but it can be lived with consciousness.

• The pain of not knowing who you are is ended by seeing you need not be anyone at all.

• We suffer from what we do not know about ourselves.

• Nothing can satisfy our deep yearning but to be who we really are.

• Your next healthy lesson is on the other side of your next disappointment.

• The kind of world you experience outwardly is the same kind of world you are inwardly.

• Nothing is more useless and frustrating than trying to make sense of life without first making sense of oneself.

• Whether understood or not, the cause of all suffering is a false idea of who we are.

• Inner agony, consciously endured, destroys itself.

• When having a thousand answers about life, many of them contradictory, we can be sure we do not yet have the Real Answer.

• Anxiety is the result of dreams crowding out realities.

• Pretending that we are confident when we are really anxious is a good way to preserve anxiety.

• All decisions should be based on what is true for you, not on what is desired by you.

• Nervousness can be a helpful message that our action has a wrong motive.

• People fail to realize that they actually fear the very truth that could make them free.

• The delusion of having wisdom creates the dangerous delusion of having power, leading to disaster.

• Depression is based on the false belief that you have a separate self which must be affirmed by others.

• All advancement toward a higher mind is made with conscious fear and trembling.

• Man's problem can be described simply as a painful inability to either stop or go.

• Fighting the scary situation is the same as fighting yourself.

• Your unconscious acceptance of the limits of your existence is what limits your existence.

• Your real nature remains unconcerned with earthly results, for it knows its security does not depend upon them.

• There is no self to be happy, there is only happiness.

• You really think that something out there hurts you, not knowing that you are your own hurt.

• You invent the fear, the obstacle, the threat, because you would rather vibrate with fear than find eternal life.

• To start life over means you have to abandon every single plan you have psychologically, not businesswise or for building the house or things like that, but psychologically, mentally, spiritually. Abandon all hope ye who enter the Temple of Truth. You must, otherwise you will stay on the shaky, trembling level of ordinary thought and scheme ways to make yourself happy, to start life afresh and leave the problems behind. If you really want to start life fresh, just know that you can’t start life all over, for you are the past. Instead, know that there’s no one there who has to start a new life. When you vanish, that is the new life.

• Self-honesty is a million times more powerful and healing than you know.

• Happiness consists of knowing the answer to the question, “Who is this defeat happening to?” The answer is, “No one.”

• You have built up a series of escapes to prevent yourself from finding happiness.

• You must always get what you want because you always are what you want. You and your wants are one. To obtain higher things, obtain a higher nature, for they too are one.

• When you have any kind of difficulty of any degree at all, why don’t you not try to solve it? Just let it go. It will keep coming back. Why don’t you give up the compulsive need to have an opinion about the problem? Track it back and find out who is frantic over solving the problem. The frantic self wants its answer. You say to yourself, “If only that person who is obstructing what I want will get out of the way, that will solve the problem.” What if I don’t create the problem in the first place by creating who I am? There is not a thing you can do about solving the problem. All you can do is cease to be the problem-creator, which means the absence of me. Then there is a totally different kind of self.

• You now do not enjoy life because you’re trying to possess it. You want ownership. Your possessions are not your immortality. So make it your aim, your strong excited aim, to enjoy life instead of possessing it. You want to collect people and houses and cars and bank accounts so that you can say, “This is mine.” It’s not yours, never was, never will be, because there’s no one there to own it. There’s no owner of life.

• Because you attribute nonexistent virtues to yourself, you also attribute them to others.

• You see, it is not selfish to live your life as you see fit; it is selfish only to insist that others live as you see fit.

Part II coming in a few minutes...

[inquiringmind4u]

Here's part II to my best-of-the-best Vernon Howard quotes. I know there's quite a few.... they're just so dang good!

• You have problems with people for the prime reason that you want something from them.

• Always remember the following fact: Anyone who is a burden to you receives secret and sinister pleasure from burdening you. Your only duty toward him is to quietly and absolutely refuse to be burdened by him. Understand that this gives him the only chance he has for lifting the burden he is to himself.

• You never really hate another person. Believing that you hate him is another type of cunning self-deception. What you really hate is the weakness in yourself that is revealed by the other person’s rejection of you. This principle contains the secret of liberty from all wrong human relations.

• You’re not good. You’re not bad. You’re nothing. That nothing is everything. Now you have enough to think about for a week.

• If you were utterly, utterly weak you would have the strength of the universe.

• Your problem is you can never be final about anything.

• God is not going to enter your darkness. It is up to you to see where you’re at in the slums and get out of there!

• If the mountain disappears as a necessity to climb, the mountain climber also disappears as a necessity to exist.

• You are really not a citizen of this world permanently. You see, you always forget that.

• Madness is to think that a cluster of thoughts is you.

• You still want something from man instead of everything from God.

• Anytime you want to be the big hero, you are going to be awfully nervous about it.

• Every time you try to conquer the world, the world conquers you.

• Winning in this world is nothing but a thought and a feeling. Losing in this world is nothing but a thought and a feeling.

• Unconsciously you create things to fight.

• A right aim is to refuse absolutely to ever attack anyone or anything again.

• For the sake of rightness, you must learn to disappoint others and yourself.

• When you see someone crying, run away fast. The guiltier you feel, the faster you should run.

• Silence in the face of an accusation leaves the problem where it belongs – with the accuser.

• The love of being afraid is one of the greatest enemies of mankind.

• The phrase that is constantly going on down deep in your psychology is: Please don’t get mad at me.

• You gain through loss.

• If you did not take pleasure in anger, you would not be angry about anything. There is a great sick pleasure and ego-excitement in the thrill of hating or any other negative emotion.

• This will save you from so much false morality and false guidance: When you do better than you are, the doing in burdensome.

• All you need to be is a simple, good, decent human being.

• You have to send a prayer to Heaven and not to hell. Find out where you are praying to hell.

• The secret of spiritual success is to repeatedly let the house collapse on top of you so often and so watchfully that you finally see that there is neither a house to collapse nor anyone for it to collapse upon.

• Dedicate yourself more and more each day to God and His Kingdom. Entering the Kingdom, entering it, is the only important thing on this earth.

• I know who I really am when I don’t think about who I am.

• All hostility is enmity against God.

• The next time I am angry at a person or a condition, I will comment to myself as follows: “Maybe I am really angry at my own weakness and inability to handle the condition.”

• You don’t know how alert you have to be to refuse the flood of insanity!

• Do you want a guaranteed spiritual formula for becoming mentally and spiritually healthy? Try to have as many devastating experiences as possible consciously. Oh, you have them now but you don’t take them rightly. You hate them or use them as an excuse to go blab to your friends about how badly life has treated such a precious person as you. You enjoy your pain. That becomes a new possession. If you’re smart, when you ask God to destroy your present ridiculous strutting little life, you will add a second prayer and ask God to enable you to meet experiences properly, with a wise spiritual mind instead of with your usual egotism. One collapse is fine. Two collapses are good. Three are great. Four are terrific. Five are stupendous.

• When you decide to become nothing in your own eyes and nothing in the eyes of other people, that nothingness is eternal life.

• You are saved by seeing sin in the present and not pleasures in the future.

• Think of this key idea: When you have no future you are saved.

• Your god is what you think about all day long.

• You need not add to your already complete true self and you cannot add to a nonexistent false self. Relax.

• You must give up all, everything, without knowing what you will have next.

• To the degree that you are in pain you are wrong.

• There is no doubt about it, an avoided pain must be suffered again and again. When avoidance is ended, the pain is ended.

• Your mind is a sacred place. Now what is the right attitude toward a sacred place.

• We can no more enjoy life by hoping for a future result than we can enjoy music by waiting for the final note.

• No one is nice unless he can be so without nice possessions and nice advantages. May heaven help you if you cling to your supposed advantages, your securities, your comforts. Anything you look forward to will destroy you as it already has.

• Think of this one important sentence and reflect on it often: Too much of me is in my life.

• Stop protecting the source of your misery, yourself. Thinking about yourself is circular. It will not solve any problems.

• The road to Heaven is straight through hell

• Here is one way to grow fast. When your feelings scream at you to do the wrong thing and your mind instructs you to do the right thing, obey your mind.

• Never expect anyone to put you at ease. Just be at ease.

• The entire secret of spiritual growth is to simply stay with whatever is happening to you without trying to change it.

• It is very important for you to know in your heart that God alone loves you.

[mercuryrising]

What you want is right in front of you at this very moment, so develop your inner eyesight.

I really like this one. And it's something that I think is key to this whole manifestation thingy. Thanks for the quotes.

[supertom]

1. “You can begin to shape your own destiny by the attitude that you keep.” – Michael Beckwith

2. "There's enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That's the truth." – Michael Beckwith
3. “You can start with nothing. And out of nothing, and out of no way, a way will be made.” – Michael Beckwith”
4. “Creation is always happening. Every time an individual has a thought, or a prolonged, chronic way of thinking, they’re in the creation process. Something is going to manifest out of those thoughts." – Michael Beckwith
5. ”There are laws of the universe and if you practice them they will respond to you.” – Michael Beckwith
6. “The enlightened give thanks for what most people take for granted …… As you begin to be grateful for what most people take for granted, that vibration of gratitude makes you more receptive to good in your life.” – Michael Beckwith
7. “And you can break yourself free from your hereditary patterns, cultural codes, social beliefs; and prove once and for all that the power within you is greater than the power that’s in the world.” – Michael Beckwith
8. ”We are here to change. We are here to grow, develop and unfold. We are progressive beings that have infinite capacity.” – Michael Beckwith
9. ”Learn to become still. And to take your attention away from what you don’t want, and all the emotional charge around it, and place your attention on what you wish to experience.” – Michael Beckwith
10. “You are at a choice-point in every moment of each circumstance, each activity, spoken word and thought.” – Michael Beckwith

[inquiringmind4u]

Originally Posted by mercuryrising

I really like this one. And it's something that I think is key to this whole manifestation thingy. Thanks for the quotes.

Hi mercuryrising. I couldn't agree more. In fact, it's absolutely essential to understanding the true secret of manifestation. Most people never realize that manifestation was never intended to manifest things (cars, houses, relationships, etc.) but was intended for a far more powerful and important aim. Perhaps you'd be interested in the comments of this thread:

What is the shortcut?

There is under comment #3 what I consider to be one of the most important unknown principles of true manifestation / Law of Attraction. "The shortcut" -- as the thread labels it.

Just thought I'd pass it along.

Take care,

Tim

[Bruce Achterberg]

Originally Posted by mercuryrising

I really like this one. And it's something that I think is key to this whole manifestation thingy. Thanks for the quotes.

For another, more proactive take on that quote:

Your external reality improves in proportion to your internal growth.
– Bruce Achterberg



I like how posting in this thread of "smart people quotes" automatically classes me as a smart person.

[quoteguy]

Some Love Quotes:

"Love is perfect kindness."

Joseph Campbell

"Love is, above all, the gift of oneself."

Jean Anouilh

"Love never claims, it ever gives."

Mohandas K. Gandhi

"All you need is love."

John Lennon

"Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart."

Alphonse Marie de la Martine

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.

Paul (A.D. First Century) 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

"Love doesn't make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile."

Elizabeth Browning

"Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."

Erich Fromm

"One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is Love."

Sophocles

"There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved."

George Sand

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."

Lao Tzu

[Dan.Linehan]

So, you listen to me! Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, story tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth, go to your God, go to your gurus, go to yourselves because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell! We'll tell you that Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch - at the end of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any ♥♥♥♥♥ you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, You maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!

- Howard Beale, Network.

[ming]

"No man will ever unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least checker his life with solitude" Thomas de Quincey

"if you are alone, you are entirely your own man" Leonardo da Vinci

[quoteguy]

Abraham Lincoln:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Alan Cohen:
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.

Aldous Huxley:
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Alfred North Whitehead:
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Anais Nin:
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Andy Warhol:
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Anne Frank:
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank:
Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.

Anthony J. D'Angelo:
Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.

Henri Bergson:
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

[cyndii]

Life's too short to be shy!"

[cyndii]

"DO WHAT YOU WANNA DO- BE WHAT YOU WANNA BE YEAH!" - Masters Apprentices song lyrics..haha

[Dan.Linehan]

Find a house you don’t have to rebuild, stone by stone, brick by brick, nail by nail.

- Arcade Fire

[Dan.Linehan]

The existence of a god certainly is a scientific question. If there exists a prime mover or a cosmic watchmaker or a meddling tinkerer or a thunderbolt-flinging patriarch, and if it had or is having an effect on the universe, then yes, god is something we should be able to detect. If god is some nebulous entity that is not part of or is not involved in affecting our existence, then it is irrelevant and can be ignored.

- PZ Meyers

[suzuki_sx29]

One I came up with myself (I think; Ive been saying it for so long I cant even remember!)

Screw TV; Life isn't a spectator sport.

[quoteguy]

A few of my favorite quotes about being a dreamer. Don't be afraid to dream. Amazing miracles are yours for the creating. Many Blessings, and Always Feel Good!

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Patrick Henry

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Lanston Hughes

[SmartAlx]

Guess who said this...

No the world isn't perfect, but imagine the effect if we all assumed that it was.

[quoteguy]

~Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same~ Francesca Reigler

~The only disability in life is a bad attitude~ Scott Hamilton

~Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude~ William James

~Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us~ John N. Mitchell

~“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you~ Brian Tracy

~The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes~ Charles R. Swindoll

[echo]

Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you cannot conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

- Brandon Lee

[quoteguy]

~Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe~ Gail Devers

~You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction~ George Lorimer

~The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man's determination~ Tommy Lasorda

~There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

~Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race~ Calvin Coolidge