I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep.
I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.
—Alexander the Great
Leadership is often mistakenly perceived as a subcategory of Business. There is certain truth in this approach as leadership is a vital aspect of business. However, it is by perceiving leadership as an independent skill to be applied on all levels of one’s life that people can reap its maximum benefits. Leadership is automatically at work whenever and wherever a group of people come together to work toward a common goal. Leadership is a mixture of art and science; depending on the situation the amounts of each ingredient vary. Sometimes a greater amount of art is required, while in other situations more science is needed. When applied in corporate contexts, leadership loses a large part of its core significance to meet goals and needs that are related to the management of people. Scholars group leadership styles into different categories. One of the most recurrent terms one comes across in business literature is Transformational leadership. Doesn’t this term sound like a tautology? What else leadership can be if not transformational? There is, of course, a whole range of terms to describe various leadership styles. Autocratic, laissez-faire, participative, transactional, and so on. Transformational leadership though is pure redundancy. The very objective of leadership is to transform people and bring out the best in them. To stress the transformational power of leadership, I would go as far as to argue that leadership is alchemy at its highest degree. Alchemy is the medieval forerunner of modern chemistry. It was first developed in medieval Europe. It aimed to purify, mature, and perfect certain metals and its practice was based on the transformation of common, base metals such as copper, silver, iron or tin into noble metals, especially gold. I consider this a very accurate metaphor for the kind of magic that can take place when great leadership is at work as it is only under great leadership that ordinary people can be transformed into extraordinary individuals. It is under great leadership that teams of common people can be turned into productive, powerful groups, thus forming a whole much greater than the sum of its parts. If leadership is not magic in motion, if it does not transform and enrich people’s lives, work, and relationships, then it should not be called leadership. It is mere management. I am absolutely not arguing that leadership is nobler than management. Managing people is a great challenge in itself. All I am suggesting is that Leadership and Management are two different domains whose methods and goals happen to converge at times.
Leadership more than a mere organizational technique is the ability to cut through the crowd, get in front of the crowd, and give them a good reason why you should keep standing there, in front of them. I’ve noticed there is a common denominator in all people I am seduced by, be it professionally, intellectually, or physically. Whether they are historic figures, politicians, influential CEOs, thought leaders or romantic partners, these people have a very powerful presence. I believe that being seduced by any figure, person or idea involves an essential ingredient. Fascination. I would not be able to notice, let alone give my attention to someone who does not stand out of the crowd. Leadership too is about igniting fascination. Leadership is about seduction. It is an affair. A polygamous one. An affair you develop gradually with different people, at the same time. These can be a small or large group of people you might not have direct contact with, yet you want to have continuous impact on them. Such people can be your colleagues, business partners, clients, members of your community, people you mentor, supporters or social media followers. There is no way you can ever be influential unless you are able to make these people to sustainably perceive things the way you do, then encourage them to act accordingly. By sustainably I mean continuously and systematically. As a leader you have projects in your head waiting to take shape. Projects need long-term commitment to materialize, so it is long-term supporters that you need to help you transform them into reality.
Even if you are not currently a leader–even if you harbor no special interest or desire to ever be one–you may still be tired of being invisible or underappreciated. Tired of having your ideas, suggestions and opinions dismissed by your boss, clients, colleagues, or friends. It hurts to be ignored. Especially while other people—which might hold less compelling ideas—receive more positive reactions or win a better hearing in meetings and negotiations. Whether you currently occupy a leadership role or aspire to one, speaking like a leader is paramount. Unless you have already achieved a special status within your industry and people know you through your work and accomplishments, you should regard speaking and communicating plans, ideas, goals and visions as the most essential part of your job description as a leader. Leaders are not like other people. At least not when it comes to communicating ideas. Leaders are performers. It is a show leaders have to deliver in front of an audience to captivate their attention, then ignite fascination, before fueling them with enough motivation and desire for action toward a specific goal. Leaders are individuals capable of taking precedence over other mortals, perceiving trends far ahead of others. Their vision and goals are so clear that they often feel compelled to act even at the risk of being perceived as reckless or stupid. They can be very confident in what others perceive as a crazy vision but they are extremely careful when it comes to communicating that vision to their audience.
The gateway to people’s mind are their eyes and ears. Therefore, if you aspire to become a leader or a better leader, it is crucial that you look and sound like one. Why do leaders need to be magnetic though? Simply because audiences and followers do not want their leaders to speak and act like everyone else. Would you accept as a leader someone who speaks and acts like the person next door? People hold their leaders to a higher standard, so they naturally demand more of them. At the same time leaders expect more of themselves too. They want their speeches to strengthen their personal status and further their organization’s success. It is in times of major change and crisis that people turn to leaders for direction and insight. In such situations a lot is at stake, so expectations are higher. For instance, it is after a national tragedy that a whole country waits for their president to speak. By the same token, when a brand releases a new product, who better to herald it than the head of the company? Following a merger or an acquisition, panicked employees don’t know where they stand until they hear the organization’s plans from the CEO’s mouth. The progress of any organization—whether it is a team operation, a department, an NGO, a start-up, or a large corporation—depends on its leader’s ability to fascinate and persuade.
Overcoming Bucephalus’ Complex: A Leader’s Greatest Challenge
I have a tremendous admiration for great historical figures. Since early childhood my parents and grand-parents instilled in me a love for greatness and epic accomplishments through storytelling and Greek mythology. One of my favorite—real—stories about Alexander the Great, king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia is his taming of Bucephalus. Bucephalus is considered by many the most famous horse in history. Alexander fought all his battles on this horse. Their initial encounter was very eventful though and took place when the Greek prince was only 12 years old. This incident revealed the true character of a young boy who, a few years later, would become one of the greatest conquerors in history. It also demonstrated that a leader’s greatest challenge is to be the masterful regulator of people’s emotions.
Bucephalus was a giant, magnificent black stalion. His name literally means “ox head” in Ancient Greek. Bucephalus was initially brought to Macedonia in 346 BC. The horse was presented to Alexander’s father, King Philip II with a price tag three times the norm of the time. There was a major issue though and it was not his price tag. Bucephalus was too wild and was rearing up anyone who came near him. No one had been able to ride, tame or even approach him. Alexander loved this horse at first sight.
None of King Philip’s attendants managed to mount Bucephalus. As they were leading him away as totally useless, Alexander, who stood by, famously exclaimed “What an excellent horse do they lose for want of address and boldness to manage him!” Philip at first took no notice of what his son said, but when he saw how vexed Alexander was to see the horse sent away, he turned to his son, saying “Do you reproach those who are older than yourself, as if you knew more, and were better able to manage him than they.” “I could manage this horse, better than others do” Alexander replied. “And if you do not, what will you forfeit for your rashness?” Philip asked. “I will pay the whole price of the horse” answered Alexander.1
As soon as the wager was settled, Alexander ran to the horse. After observing his behavior he noticed that the horse was not afraid of humans like others thought. It was afraid of its own shadow. Alexander came up with a totally original approach in taming it. He took hold of the bridle and turned the horse’s face directly toward the sun, having observed that the horse was afraid of the motion of its own shadow. He then let him go a little forward, still holding the reins in his hands, and stroking the horse gently when he found him begin to grow eager. He let fall his upper garment softly and with one nimble leap he mounted him. When he felt Bucephalus free from all rebelliousness and impatient for the course, he let him go at full speed, inciting him with a commanding voice and urging him also with his heel. Philip and his attendants looked on at first in silence and anxiety for the result, till seeing him turn at the end of his career and come back rejoicing and triumphing for what he had performed, they all burst out into acclamations of applause.
Historians claim that the taming of the wild Bucephalus was a turning point in the young prince’s life, demonstrating the fearlessness, sharp perception and determination he was to show later in his conquest of Asia and other continents. Bucephalus and Alexander were inseparable; only Alexander could ride that horse. This is precisely what I call the “Bucephalus’ Complex.” Aside from horses it can be applied to us, modern humans. This is what I regard as the noblest and most powerful skill a leader can ever possess: skillfully turning people’s heads toward the sun to distract them away from their own shadows that is, away from self-doubt, self-sabotaging attitudes, unreasonable fears and risk-aversion to lead them toward challenges, goals and projects. Like Alexander managed to free the wild Bucephalus from his rebelliousness, leaders need to break through people’s defense barriers before guiding them toward their desired goals.
Your team, the people you are in charge of, the people you mentor are your Bucephalus. Once you manage to help them get rid of their insecurities and fears, once you help them develop skills they will be ready to “go to battle” and execute your orders. Fighting against people’s inner devils can sometimes feel like Don Quixote fighting against windmills though. But it does pay off. It is only after you’ve freed people of their fears and insecurities and after you’ve made them discover their full potential that they will pledge allegiance to you and your vision much more promptly than they would otherwise do.
Alexander the Great: A Quintessential Leader
Alexander the Great (356 BC–323 BC) was the son of King Philip II of Macedonia. He grew up not only in great privilege but also in great learning, with the renowned Greek philosopher Aristotle being his personal tutor. He admired Homer’s mythic heroes and slept beside a copy of the Iliad, annotated by Aristotle himself. Wise well beyond his age, he acted fast to secure Macedonian hegemony. In the space of only 11 years he conquered the then-known world, from Macedon, through Greece, across Persia to India then down to North Africa. In geographic terms he achieved within a decade what other empires took centuries to achieve. He became king at the age of 20, when his father was assassinated, and he was 32 years old when he died. In an unparalleled 11-year journey of conquest he rode more than 10,000 miles and fought 70 battles without losing a single one. His remarkable speed of movement was revealed in the short time he took to seize the then-known world; a time when expeditions were carried out exclusively on foot.
A few centuries later, the year Julius Caesar celebrated his 32nd birthday, as he was reading the life of Alexander the Great, he suddenly burst into tears. Perhaps the most ambitious of us ought to cry with him! His friends were surprised. On being asked the reason, he famously told them “Do you not think, it is matter for sorrow that while Alexander, at my age, was already king of so many peoples, I have as yet not achieved no brilliant success?” Indeed, Alexander set the bar high. In a very short time he became the role model of all subsequent military leaders. He was the first person who had a vision of conquering the whole world. Within that vision he wanted to know everything. He wanted to have seen everything and to have done everything by the time his life was finished. On many levels he did accomplish that. Above all, he wanted to acquire knowledge and then disseminate it.
Aside from being a great military leader and statesman, he was one of the greatest intellects of his time. Surprisingly, the size of his army never went over 40,000 soldiers. In his military tactics, Alexander prioritized mobility and speed which both gave his army military advantage over opponents who outnumbered him. He surrounded himself with all sorts of people. During his expeditions he traveled with members of the court which included engineers, poets, scientists, philosophers, doctors, and slave traders, and most importantly a personal historian who wrote his exploits which were then sent far and wide, so that his name would be forever respected.
Far from becoming obsolete in modern times, Alexander’s leadership skills have become increasingly relevant to anyone holding a leadership position or aspiring to one, including politicians and those operating in corporate and nonprofit organizations. The question is, what did Alexander do differently from the rest? How did he manage to achieve virtual worldwide success in the space of a decade without losing a single battle? How can modern leaders get inspired by his achievements to succeed in their respective arenas? How does his leadership strategy apply to modern life?
Speed in Decision and Action
From early childhood, Alexander mastered the lesson that problems should be faced, not avoided. He demonstrated flexibility and would eagerly abandon his comfort zone when needed, often modifying his strategy to accommodate new conditions. Alexander did not have the luxury of time in the battlefield. His course of action involved a series of critical decisions that would either lead to victory or defeat. He had long battles with Darius III of Persia. Despite being surprised by Darius’ strategic moves, he displayed speed of mind by turning his army around and arriving at the battleground before the enemy had fully prepared their defense.
Innovative, Daring, and Excellent Strategist
The capacity to come up with innovative and unconventional ideas was Alexander’s major hallmark. He always managed to find alternative solutions to problems that represented deadlocks for others. He was cunning in military strategy and excellent at reading the battlefield, the two qualities which led him to a phenomenal record of consecutive battle conquests. Alexander was a genius in the art of planning. Before every campaign he would spend time anticipating his opponent’s possible moves and developing tactics to prevent their actions. This reduced the possibilities of unpleasant surprises and led to decisive and swift actions. He overcame armies far more powerful and numerous than his by being more determined, smarter, and more resourceful than his opponents. Amazingly, Alexander built his empire with an army that numbered no more than 40,000 soldiers. This means he had to make optimal use of his forces to overcome the overwhelming numbers that opposed him.
Astute Negotiator
Alexander was willing to negotiate and build strategic alliances whenever they were possible and convenient for his objectives. However, he always kept in mind what alternatives to negotiation he had. He preferred to receive a friendly surrender proposal from his opponents, rather than spend significant amounts of energy, time, and resources fighting against each city and country. Although he worked to befriend the people of the nations he conquered, he always made sure that Macedonians were in overall charge.
Led and Fought by Example
“A boss says ‘Go!’ A leader says ‘Let’s go!’” This well-known quote by E.M. Kelly applies here. Alexander led his people to conquer the world by providing an example. He never asked from his soldiers anything that he would not do himself, which explains why his men were fiercely loyal. Unlike most military leaders, he always led from front in battle where he was easily recognizable. Although this made him an easier target for the enemy, he was a stirring inspiration for his own troops. He was injured countless times, but being unceasingly courageous, he continually pushed himself to physical limits.
Cross-Cultural Intelligence
Alexander was extremely sensitive to the cultural differences of the diverse nations he conquered and early on realized that varied cultures required different leadership styles. He spoke several languages and always customized his leadership style to match the values and culture of each nation. At the same time, he was careful to win over religious figures and was never too proud to bow before the gods of other nations.
Bold and Clear Goals
Alexander’s obsession with glory led him to set ambitious, bold, and clear goals for himself and his people. Holder of a cloudless vision, he was masterful in communicating that vision and convincing those around him to embrace his goals. Alexander is remembered for his unbendable will and persistence in besieging impregnable cities. Every city eventually fell under the perseverance of his various attacks. Alexander concentrated his resources on the task at hand. And only when the task was finished, would he focus his efforts on the next objective.
He Understood PR Very Well and Wrote His Own History
If we think in numbers, he lived no longer than 32 years. He built his empire within less than 12 years and his legend has been lasting more than 24 centuries. So, Alexander obviously did a phenomenal job managing his reputation. He founded 12 cities bearing his name in the various countries he conquered—he gave to all 12 the name of “Alexandria.” He associated his name with excellence, power, unbendable will, and knowledge. Alexander was tremendously ambitious. He surrounded himself with symbols that built his image. His obsession for long-lasting glory helped him endure virtually everything for the sake of achieving his life goals. It was precisely this obsession that strengthened his determination, spreading confidence among his people and fear among his enemies. He represented the type of leader that every soldier would like to have: courageous, determined, and undefeated. However, unlike other major military leaders—like Genghis Khan or Ivan the Terrible—Alexander was never seen as a tyrant. Amazingly, his was the only conqueror in history people were proud to be conquered by. Throughout his Asiatic expedition Alexander carried with him an influential historian of the time, Callisthenes of Olynthus, the nephew of Aristotle. Callisthenes’ main duty was to write the Deeds of Alexander which were then sent to every corner of his empire to secure posthumous fame.
He Surrounded Himself with the Right People
He selected his people very carefully, particularly the companions who fought around him and helped him make crucial decisions. He displayed exceptional emotional intelligence. Knowing his people thoroughly, Alexander developed a keen sense of their problems, fears, and needs. He empowered them so they could develop their full potential. Those he selected helped him achieve his outrageous dreams and guarded the destiny of his empire until his death. He paid attention to meritocracy, making sure that he generously rewarded loyalty and superb behavior. He gave his men incentives to conquer new lands by making them feel like owners of the conquered territories.
He Was Merciless with Those Who Opposed or Betrayed Him
Alexander’s use of reward and coercive power increased with his success. To promote teamwork and cohesion, Alexander established compensation for units and for the whole army. He was, however, ruthless with those who opposed or betrayed his trust. The Siege of Tyre is a very representative example. Tyre was the largest Phoenician city built on an “impregnable” island. Alexander’s siege of it took seven months in which 7,000 Tyrians died in its defense. After conquest, Alexander crucified 2,000 more and the remaining 30,000 were sold into slavery.
The Leadership Pyramid
We humans are pattern-based. We form habits and do not like disruptions to what we have been used to. People have expectations, especially when they function in a pattern-based fashion. Napoleon Bonaparte was an expert in expectation management. He always advocated the “say what you mean” principle. Be responsible for your words and actions. Responsibility is, in fact, a major leadership task. As the word itself suggests responsibility goes far beyond mere commitment to a project or ownership of one’s actions. “Responsibility,” as the Latin root of the word suggests, is the ability to respond. Responsibility is also about responding efficiently to adversity, challenges, risks and opportunities. The larger the number of people, projects and risks you are in charge of or involved in, the greater the power of responsibility is. Notice that I am not talking about the need for responsibility. I am talking about the power of responsibility. Napoleon’s art of responsibility and the “say what you mean” communication strategy inspired confidence and trust in his soldiers and people and made them follow him wherever he led them.
Your leadership style and communication skills form integral part of your Corporate Fingerprint and your Unique Skill Pairings, a personal theory I live by and which I am proud to share with you in the next section. It is, therefore, important for your people to see your sincerity as a leader. By choosing your words carefully you can show that you mean serious business. Who you are is inseparable from the message you communicate as well as the way you choose to deliver that message to your audience. By this, I don’t simply mean that your actions must speak louder than your words. This speaks by itself! I mean that your particular character, who you are, what you preach, your actions and values should shape the message that your audience hears. False hopes and empty promises are not what you would hear from good leaders, and here’s a key paradox: leaders must be centered on themselves in order to construct a powerful message that reflects their unique personality, charisma and vision, yet when they speak to their audiences they speak not for themselves but for their people, teams and wider organizations. The trust that followers, supporters or team members place on you functions pretty much like an emotional money box. We all know how money boxes work. You save up money by making deposits and when you need to use part of that money you withdraw some of it. The same goes with a leader’s trust account. It is an account based on how reliable people feel you are, how much and how far they feel they can trust you. There are countless ways—and even more excuses!—to make emotional withdrawals from your trust account: being inconsistent, speaking in a way while acting otherwise, changing your mind, strategy or direction too often. So, withdrawals from that trust account must be reasonable, and it is important that you never reach a zero balance as, unlike with real bank accounts, it is very hard to restore credibility.
Being consistent and demonstrating integrity is the moral floor upon which trusting and lasting relationships can be built in life and business. Leaders can only have an impact when they operate from a solid basis that allows people to feel comfortable listening and trusting their word. Getting people to actively listen to you is the very foundation and perhaps the hardest and most decisive stage of the Leadership Pyramid. Once you have captivated people’s attention and convinced them that your message is worth listening to, you can move on to the next stage. It is only after people have bought into your vision that they can start aligning their beliefs and actions to your message. It’s only after you’ve managed to gain people’s active listening and built trust that you can move on to the third level of the Leadership Pyramid, which involves other people’s action and much less your own. It is important that you give your best self in the first two stages where you have the most control, as in the following four stages leading to the top of the pyramid, most control passes to your followers, the people who carry and propagate your message. The clearer, sharper, and the more meticulously framed your message is at the initial stage and the more momentum and drive it carries, the more chances it has to make it to the top of the pyramid. There is an additional advantage to a clear, well-defined, sharp message. In this social media-dominated world we all live in, tons of messages are produced, liked, shared, and … forgotten daily. Every day millions of messages are produced, aimed at millions of people. Don’t allow yours to be one among thousands of other messages. Social media marketers have established a growing trend: to maintain presence and visibility of their brands, they literally bombard their customers, followers and subscribers with infotainment posts several times a day. While this strategy can be effective for short-term sales, it is far from being a smart way for leaders to empower their personal brand and communicate their message. As a leader you want to make a long-term impact. It is therefore important that every single one of your messages is a firework. It must be eventful and long-awaited.
When crafting a message, it is important to identify the best channels to reach your target audience. The combination of channels you need to leverage varies based on the type of message you want to share and the kind of audience you are trying to reach. However, no matter what type of message you want to communicate or what type of audience you target, your message must ideally combine a strategic mix of key elements to increase in strength and momentum: a core idea, down-to-earth pragmatism, a revolutionary idea, and a call to action to overcome a challenge. To be inspiring and gain a maximum reach, to propagate and endure through time, a message needs to be engaging, value-adding and must urge people to act. Words, be it written or spoken, are not enough to make your message endure. While a smart mix of these elements can make your message appealing, it’s not enough to engage people so that they act on it. Action can take the form of a lifestyle change, the acquisition of a new set of skills, or a change of perception that pushes people to make adjustments to their lives. A message that endures is one that defies time and space. Such messages are more enduring than the leaders who have uttered them. They often remain in people’s minds when the leader is not physically present and for a long time after their death. Examples include ideas one can find in famous speeches such as Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech, John F. Kennedy’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” or Deng Xiaoping’s famous “to be rich is glorious!”, a historic statement that inaugurated a series of market reforms that turned communist China into the global economic superpower it is now.
Crafting Your Corporate Fingerprint: The Power of Unique Skill Pairings (USP)
As human beings we serve no purpose on this planet if we have no value to add to our species. It is impossible to find two human beings with the same fingerprint or DNA blueprint and there is a good reason for this. If two people are exactly the same, one is not needed. The way to bring value to the human race is to be unique, one of a kind. The way every species on earth survives, evolves, and thrives is by adding value to its collective progression. The greater the value you bring to the species, the more valuable and irreplaceable you become as a part of a greater whole. As a result, the more reliant the species becomes on you for survival, evolution and progression. When this principle is applied in the wider economy, it means that the more you serve and produce for others through your unique talents, skills and creativity–the more and bigger the problems you solve for others–the greater is the value you add to your own life and career progression.
It is through acts of creativity that we add unique value to the species, the market and the wider economy. The economy is an interconnected web of values brought to the table by individuals that share the desire to add value using their unique skills and talents. The amount and quality of the ingredients you contribute to the “pie” adds or detracts from the economy, its evolution and ultimately its progress. Selling is serving others; it’s about offering solutions to consumers’ needs through fair exchange. Buying is serving others; it’s all about offering a monetary round of applause to a business producing a value-adding product or service. Earning money is serving others; it’s about being remunerated a share of the overall economy. Hiring people to work for you is serving others; it means that you support their subsistence, your local economy and that you contribute to taxes.
All value-adding acts lead to more exchange and to a greater economy, thus functioning as a platform for others to serve in return. Uneven contribution of unique value explains why wealth is not evenly distributed. As ideological and ethical socialism and communism might sound, they don’t encourage people to stand out and create unique value, which explains why capitalism is nowadays more prevalent in most political systems across the world. By offering incentives for personal growth and achievement it balances self-interest with the interconnected benefit of serving and adding value to the greater whole. When it comes to leadership things are no different than species evolution or the economy. Your leadership style is a core part of your Corporate Fingerprint (CF). It is specific to you and makes you unique. A leader must be unique. They must stand out and it is an uncommon combination of skills and personality traits that is required for a leader to become unique.
Skill acquisition is an integral part of learning. It starts the moment we take our first breath and ends when we have ended. Everyone has the ability to learn new skills and acquire new competences but it is the use we make of them and how smartly we combine them that makes all the difference. A smart combination of skills will propel you to stardom within your organization or industry. I came up with the concept of Unique Skill Pairings (USP) to define an uncommon combination of distant qualities and skills that I have applied in my own life and career. That is, a combination of skills that is hard to find in one same person. Possessing a single competence, skill or a group of skills that are closely related (e.g., software engineering and graphic design) won’t help you reap maximum benefits in terms of career advancement. You need to develop unique, hard to copy talents to distinguish yourself from other people and create your own, unique, impossible to copy Corporate Fingerprint (CF). If you look in any organization, business, or industry it is not hard to notice that the amount of people who represent the best in what they do is indeed very limited. These are the industry giants. People you hear or read about in the media and professional journals. What few people seem to know is that you don’t need extraordinary talents to be extraordinary. What you actually need is a mix, a cocktail of skills. Most extraordinary people do not possess extraordinary skills. Rather, they have developed a mix of distant skills.
The more “you” you are, the more unique and authentic, the more extraordinary and happier you end up feeling in your career and life. Talent is a terrible thing to waste. Each one of us has the potential to add unique value to their organization, team and community by developing a smart set of Unique Skill Pairings (USP). Examples of USP abound. Some are more known than others but the formula remains the same. Steve Jobs mixed technology and aesthetics and Apple products came into being. His love for distinctive design—clean, fun, and friendly—fueled a design revolution in high technology. Ferran Adrià, a Michelin-starred chef from Barcelona, is one of the best and perhaps the most controversial and experimental chefs in the world. The type of guy who can turn asparagus into bread and almonds into cheese. His restaurant El Bulli was rated the best restaurant in the world 4 years in a row. It receives up to 1,000,000 reservation requests every year but only a few hundred are accepted. Ferran Adrià is a molecular cuisine chef and his dish inventions have revolutionized the face of modern gastronomy. If you deconstruct him the way he deconstructs food, you will discover that he is a cook, an artist, a scientist, a designer, a philosopher, an inventor, and an anarchist. All at the same time. He managed to mix distant skills, talents, interests, and personality traits to combine gastronomy and chemistry. The result is explosive.
How do you know the ingredients of your own mix? It is crucial that you know exactly what your mixable skills and talents are. Knowing the exact ingredients is crucial when it comes to developing your Unique Skill Pairings (USP) formula. Adding a touch of eccentricity to the mix is a great plus. It is important that you make your own Unique Skill Pairings (USP) list. Work on this list as diligently as you would for a professional project. I suggest that you take a paper and write down five things you think you are good at. Not great or excellent but good at. Once you write those down, ask at least three family members, three friends, and three coworkers to add elements to your list. Once they suggest you are good at a particular skill please don’t argue with them! It is important that these people do not belong in the same group. Family and close relatives know hidden aspects of your personality and life story that few people do. Colleagues are familiar with your technical and teamwork skills while friends can bring insightful feedback on other facets of your personality such as your social ability and soft skills. These three categories of people combined will help you gain a 360-degree view of yourself. You should welcome both positive and negative feedback. This will help you see your personal attributes, your strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Apart from helping you discover what your potential Unique Skill Pairings (USP) are, seeing youself from different angles will give you the opportunity to understand how you are perceived by those around you. It will also help you understand your reputation and take action accordingly to reach your goals. Make sure to take note of everything they will add to your list, then take these skills into account before sitting down alone to construct your USP formula. Do keep in mind that you need to mix distant ingredients. Remember. The more distant the ingredients, the stronger your cocktail mix. Think about it! Mixing Coke and Pepsi is unlikely to give an impressive result. Originality is a key element when it comes to developing your Corporate Fingerprint.
When deciding to build a new set of skills or wondering which existing ones to further develop, it is crucial to take into account the Unique Skill Pairings (USP) principle. It will help you stand out of the competition and propel you to a much higher level of success and exposure to better quality business and life opportunities. Possessing Unique Skill Pairings (USP) won’t only make you more employable and more competitive within your field. It will make you irreplaceable. Irreplaceability is the greatest, most valuable asset one can possibly possess, not only in the job market but also as a leader in any corporate or life setting. Your Unique Skill Pairings (USP) are an invaluable asset that will follow you everywhere you go. Financial assets are volatile, your unique intellectual assets are not. In the aftermath of a hard-to-overcome failure, a bankruptcy or any form of financial misfortune, your Unique Skill Pairings (USP) will still be there, at your service, ready to put in smart use existing resources or create new ones from scratch.
People who can only master one skill are replaceable. If you are a good salesman, there is not much to be proud of. Why? Because you are replaceable! If you are a great engineer or doctor, you are still replaceable. The same applies to personality traits. If you are just funny, you are replaceable. If you are just ambitious, you are replaceable. If all you are is a serious, knowledgeable talker, you are also replaceable. It is only when you start combining distant skill sets and personality traits that you can seriously increase your chances to achieve legendary status within your field. Having said that, acquiring similar skills will still make you a better version of yourself, more competitive in the job market but by no means will it make you irreplaceable. Irreplaceability is at the top of the pyramid and aside from a high salary, recognition and authority, it will offer two additional benefits: more bargaining power and better opportunities in Life and Business. It is pretty common to see professionals developing similar sets of skills. You might, for instance, see people that have studied computer engineering to further their industry skills by acquiring a competence in software development. Good job. But to become unique within their field one should be acquiring distant skills; That is, skills that seem unrelated to each other. Very often the sort of skills that are regarded as irrelevant to their field.
There is a reason why I find job titles and labels very limiting. A title is a pretty static thing. We evolve every day and learning is a never-ending affair. Many people choose to overspecialize in an aspect of their job, field or industry. It is, however, by navigating across different fields and industries that you will discover unexpected things, push your limits and become more than you have ever thought. In short, by defining yourself you are limiting yourself. We are well aware of how necessary it is to possess a concrete job title in the corporate world, especially when attending networking events or introducing yourself to people who try to make sense of what your company stands for and what is your expertise. In reality, however, limiting your intellectual capacity, skills, competences and actions to your job title can be extremely damaging, not to say destructive, to your career. It can impede your growth, prevent you from venturing into new territories and getting seriously creative. Creativity is the common denominator that drives great leaders and all types of outstanding professionals from entrepreneurs to artists, scientists or life coaches. A key question here is: Can we reach a super high level of creativity without being geniuses? Yes. By developing distant, opposite-side-of-the-spectrum skills. Creative people are often paradoxical. In his seminal book Creativity: the Work and Lives of 91 Prominent People, professor of Psychology and Management Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Yes. Croatian names can be as tough as this to pronounce!) writes:
“I have devoted thirty years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it’s complexity. They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an individual, each of them is a multitude.”
To engineer your Corporate Fingerprint, to become seriously creative and add real value to the market, your business or organization, you have to learn, do and be different things. One cannot be creative, say in physics by only acquiring a great education in physics. To be creative in physics it takes another education. Creativity requires that we use mental patterns and mechanisms we have learned elsewhere. We have to immerse ourselves into a different universe for extra inspiration. In a sense, we need to alienate ourselves in a positive, constructive way. It is astonishing to see how overspecialized employees have become over the past few decades. It is sad to see how successful the job industry are at shaping people’s minds and limiting their potential, skills and career choices by mass-producing overspecialized, disposable staff that can be replaced anytime. We are sacrificing well-rounded members of society by transforming them into gullible worker bees ready to submit to the dictates of their boss, the job industry or large corporations. While this serves the interest of large corporations, it doesn’t serve yours. Whatever you do, strive to become a one-of-a-kind art of craftsmanship. Unique Skill Pairings (USP) are combinations of professional skills and qualities that do not normally fall on the same side of the spectrum. You have surely met or worked with great professionals who are leading figures in their respective fields. Becoming a category of your own and achieving legendary status within a specific field requires a combination of Unique Skill Pairings (USP) and Unique Personality Pairings (UPP).
Corporate Fingerprint Formula
CORPORATE FINGERPRINT = USP(UNIQUE SKILL PAIRINGS) + UPP(UNIQUE PERSONALITY PAIRINGS)
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Examples of USP and UPP |
Unique Skill Pairings (USP) |
• Project Management + Graphic Arts + Fluency in Mandarin • Software Engineering + Marketing+ Fluency in German • Business Development + Public Speaking + Fluent in French and Hindi • Sales + Graphic design + Music Composer |
Unique Personality Pairings (UPP) |
• Playful + Disciplined • Down-to-earth + Creative • Rebellious + Conservative • Proud + Humble • Passionate + Objective • Cocky + Sensitive • Responsible + Laissez-faire |
Corporate Fingerprint |
• Down-to-earth + Creative + Business Development + Public Speaking + Fluent in French and Hindi • Passionate + Objective + Software Engineering + Marketing + Fluency in German • Cocky + Sensitive + Sales + Graphic Design + Music Composer |
Would you rather hire a project manager or a Down-to-Earth and Creative Project Manager who is passionate about Painting and is Fluent in English and Mandarin? The possible USP and UPP combinations are countless. The ones on the table are but a few examples and for the sake of clarity are limited to three elements. Your Corporate Fingerprint (CF) is yours to design. Variety remains key here. Possessing three distant skills makes you more competitive than possessing six closely related skills. A combination of Unique Skill Pairings (USP) and Unique Personality Pairings (UPP) will result into something unprecedented. People will want to be associated to you, not merely for what you do, but for who you are. Possessing uncommon personality traits, being drawn to variety, welcoming change, having a mind filled with curiosity and a mass of contradictions helps. A lot. If this doesn’t sound like you, it’s still fine. You might lack that natural drive but not the ambition and common sense required to chart a strategic route to developing a smart skill mix essential to your success as a leader.
If a strong set of Unique Skill Pairings (USP) is the key ingredient to developing a strong Corporate Fingerprint (CF), Skill Layering (SL) is the core ingredient when it comes to solidifying your Unique Skill Pairings (USP) edifice through a smart combination of existing and new skills.
Absolute skill mastery is not necessary to develop a successful skill layering strategy. Skill layering requires, though, a few primary skills. I have decided to call this type of skills Access Skills (AS). That is, basic micro-skills that cannot be used independently, unless they are applied in a wider, macro-skills context. It is about building new sets of skills based on the ones that have been already acquired. Access Skills (AS) function pretty much like cement, holding your skills edifice together. These skills help you expand your competence sets. Using them will help you combine and cement different sets of skills and competences into a whole, thus forming your Unique Corporate Fingerprint. Access Skills (AS) are very valuable at the initial stage when learning a new skill, by considerably reducing confusion as well as the cognitive and communicative load that comes hand in hand with the development of a new competence. Access Skills (AS) include your memory and the ability to observe patterns based on existing skills. Remember this: It’s easier to sidestep than climb. Access Skills (AS) can take many shapes and forms depending on the number of skills you have developed so far and on how well you master those. Such skills won’t only make you more adaptable to new situations. Access Skills (AS) have a compounding effect; they save you time and energy and double your efficiency. Examples of Access Skills include:
1. Team-building
2. Problem-solving skills
3. Cross-cultural intelligence
4. Analytical/Quantitative skills
5. Strong work ethic
6. Flexibility/Adaptability
7. Initiative
8. Written communication skills
9. Verbal communication skills
I love to immerse myself into different cultures and learn foreign languages. I have always considered cross-cultural intelligence and communication a key aspect of my Corporate Fingerprint and personal expansion strategy. Both literally and metaphorically. Expansion in the sense of personal development through active exposure to different cultures, reasoning patterns and ways of perceiving the world. Expansion, also, in concrete geographic country and market terms, that is, expansion of career opportunities, and growth of financial assets. Economic growth has slowed down significantly in recent years, especially after the 2008 financial crisis. On top of this, markets in the Western world have become alarmingly saturated.
Going the extra mile and becoming fluent in another language will inevitably offer you a strong competitive advantage over those entering a new market with basic knowledge and minimal understanding of the local culture. There are still pristine market territories to be explored in emerging economies across the world. Don’t limit yourself to what has now become a confined place. I was a Humanities student when I was at senior high school. Ancient Greek and Latin were two courses that most people would try to avoid, for two reasons. They looked “Chinese” to them, or they simply regarded them as dead languages, a mere waste of time. I had a different way of seeing things. Learning dead Latin actually helped me learn better, faster and effortlessly a bunch of modern, living languages, such as French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and gain access to a full range of career opportunities that come hand in hand with having access to these cultures, countries and markets. If you can already see the pattern, I used Latin as an access skill (a skill that cannot be used independently in the modern world) to help me learn faster and more efficiently four other languages which I actually use daily to expand my professional and social network, my business, client base, professional projects and career opportunities. Most importantly, developing strong cross-cultural communication skills offered me extra freedom and flexibility. If a hurricane or financial crisis strikes tomorrow, I still have plenty of options in terms of geographic locations and business opportunities through access to familiar markets. Lesson of the story: never underestimate any skill, as outdated or old-fashioned as it may seem.
I was 17 years old when my parents expressed a real concern after realizing how irrevocable I was in my decision to move to Paris and study French Linguistics and Literature at university. Relatives wouldn’t stop asking me what kind of career I was hoping to pursue with this major, considering that I was not dreaming of a school teacher career. Such nonsense questions allowed me to see for the first time how people limit their own life choices. My answer was the same to everyone: “Relax people. I am not planning to only study this major. I am planning to do much more. I am actually planning to become much more. This is only the beginning!” In theory everyone likes to have freedom of choice. In practice though, people don’t like to face many choices. Making a choice requires action and the willingness to adapt to a new context. New choices lead to unfamiliar paths forcing people to step out of their comfort zone, which is something many are not willing to do. When I was studying Language and Literature in the department of Humanities at Sorbonne University in Paris, I was part of a world that holds its own values, rules, patterns of thought and of course its own stereotypes. Humanities scholars have a sort of aversion for the corporate world. They regard corporate professionals (business people, bankers, traders, etc.) as uncultured, profoundly unscrupulous, greedy egomaniacs in pursuit of high job titles and fat bonuses. The kind of people that deserve to be looked with a certain disdain and which they regard as the root cause of all the unfortunate things that happen in this world, from environmental pollution to the recent financial crisis and so on. On the other side you have corporate people and entrepreneurs who have a totally different set of values and who in their turn regard intellectuals and educators as failures. They see them as not smart enough to actually do something other than teaching, writing, or spend time criticizing society. Although there might be some truth there, these are stereotypes. But real stereotypes affecting real lives nonetheless. If you have experienced both worlds you know what I am talking about.
Developing Unique Skill Pairings (USP) requires an almost schizophrenic way of being, thinking and operating. So, don’t be afraid to be many people at the same time. Don’t be afraid of a bit of confusion. Don’t be afraid to be a walking contradiction. Above all, don’t feel you are being disloyal to yourself when dealing with different sorts of people or when operating in unfamiliar environments. Adaptability is the business of a leader. Be a chameleon of all colors and shades … and, of course, make sure you enjoy it! I am proud of the fact that I belong simultaneously to different worlds and groups of people. You might sometimes feel overwhelmed by the work that is involved in building these “chameleon skills.” The key is to not feel intimidated by the task. For this reason it is essential that you choose very carefully the skills you will be investing time and energy in. It is sad to see how many people are struggling to improve at things they will never be good at. Don’t make this same mistake. It’s important to focus your energy, time and resources into becoming great in something you are already good at, instead of struggling to become average or decent in something that is not your cup of tea.
Make sure that you invest in those skills that are right for you, always taking into account your natural talents and inclinations. I was never fond of science classes at school. Instead of spending extra time to improve myself in those areas I had no interest nor talent in, I chose to invest most of my time getting great at those things I was already very good at–which also happen to be the ones I enjoyed studying the most. This is a rule I still live by. It is in perfect alignment with the 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle2 which I am discussing in detail in the Business section.
In the process of building your own Corporate Fingerprint the main goal is to be perceived as a bargain, the real deal. You should aim to become an addiction to those around you. As Steve Martin famously said “Be so good, they can’t ignore you,” I would like to take this a bit further and say “Be so good, they can’t get over you.” Developing a magnetic personality means that you become a person people are drawn toward, then get addicted to. Not simply attracted to or seduced by. I am talking about addiction here. If you think about it, it is in specific product categories and brands that people who manifest various forms of addiction get addicted to. Smokers tend to be addicted to a specific cigarette brand. Alcoholics to a particular type of liquor. Studies have shown that video gambling addicts are only addicted to this form of gambling and wouldn’t be interested in say, roulette betting.
There is a key concept in the food industry. The bliss point. When manufacturing food, producers look for the optimal sweetness/acidity ratio, the bliss point. Striking the perfect flavor balance prevents consumers from feeling satiated and full. As a result, they consume a lot more food than they normally would. The ratio that keeps you wanting to eat more at a point where you overeat. It is interesting to use this as an analogy and apply the optimal ratio principle to the development of your Corporate Fingerprint (CF). The bliss point formula applies perfectly to the development of Unique Skill Pairings (USP).
It teaches us how building an “addictive” Corporate Fingerprint can make you irreplaceable and make people ask for more. More of your talents, time, skills, experience, guidance. More of you! You should always look at the bliss point ratio when crafting your personal brand. The optimal level of “sweetness” and “acidity.” For instance, if you are overly disciplined and conservative in the way you lead your company, your career or life, that might be at the extreme of the salty side of the flavor spectrum. Have you thought what sort of ingredients you need to put into your Unique Skill Pairings (USP) mix to draw people to you over and over again. An important element to consider when embarking in any skill learning adventure is the level of mastery we aim to achieve. It is a high level of competence that will allow you to make a real difference. The Writing Spectrum can be used as a reference for developing any new skill. It is important to break down your skill learning goals into milestones during the whole process. The darker the shade, the higher one’s level of competence.
Skills Wheel: the list on each section is non-exhaustive.
Now open an Excel chart and create your own Unique Skill Pairings Wheel. The more elements it combines and the more colorful it is, the strongest your Corporate Fingerprint.
Leadership is not a noun. It is a verb. It’s action. It’s movement.
—John Maxwell
Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.
—Barack Obama
It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
—Niccolò Machiavelli
You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.
—Gene Mauch
Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
—Arthur Christopher Benson
A good leader takes care of those in their charge. A bad leader takes charge of those in their care.
—Simon Sinek
A true hero isn’t measured by the size of his strength but by the strength of his heart.
—Hercules
I learned that a great leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do and like it.
—Harry S. Truman
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
—Dennis A. Peer
Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
—Tom Peters
To lead the people, walk behind them.
—Lao-Tzu
A leader is a dealer in hope.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, attributed
You can like people without leading them but you cannot lead people well without liking them.
—John C. Maxwell
No man will even be a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.
—Andrew Carnegie
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.
—Robert Jarvik
A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.
—John C. Maxwell
I praise loudly, I blame softly.
—Catherine the Great
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
—Colin Powell
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
—Stephen Covey
The way to get people to build a ship is not to teach them carpentry, assign them tasks and give them schedules to meet; but to inspire them to long for the infinite immensity of the sea.
—Antoine se Saint-Exupéry
Leadership is action, not position.
—Donald H. McGannon
Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” - a leader says “Let’s go!”
—E.M. Kelly
A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says “I was beaten,” he does not say “My men were beaten.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Management is the art of making problems so interesting that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
—Paul Hawken
Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.
—Eric Hoffer
The promise given was a necessity of the past. The word broken is a necessity of the present.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
With the right attitude self-imposed limitations vanish.
—Alexander the Great
It’s so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to.
—Annie Gottlier
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
—Hugh Downs
Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities—always see them, for they’re always there.
—Norman Vincent Peale
Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.
—Author Unknown
How can something bother you if you won’t let it?
—Terri Guillemets
Life is not happening to you. Life is responding to you.
—Author Unknown
The impossible can always be broken down into possibilities.
—Author Unknown
The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.
—C.C. Scott
Never be ashamed of a scar. It simply means you are stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.
—Author unknown
It is easy to keep things at a distance; it is hard to be naturally beyond them.
—Bunan
Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.
—Francesca Reigler
Defeat is not bitter unless you swallow it.
—Joe Clark
Physical strength is measured by what we can carry; spiritual by what we can bear.
—Author Unknown
We always think we’d be happier in some faraway place, as if you could catch a plane to a state of mind.
—Robert Brault
The only disability in life is a bad attitude.
—Scott Hamilton
Your life is your garden,
Your thoughts are the seeds.
If your life isn’t awesome,
You’ve been watering the weeds.
—Author Unknown
Pain and suffering are inevitable in our lives but misery is an option.
—Chip Beck
Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
—Author unknown
There are two types of people—those who come into a room and say, “Well, here I am!” and those who come in and say, “Ah, there you are.”
—Frederick L. Collins
If you have nothing to be grateful for check your pulse.
Anywhere is paradise; it’s up to you.
—Author Unknown
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
—Winston Churchill
They may destroy your rose gardens, but no harm has been done, so that they have not destroyed your urge for roses.
—Muriel Strode Lieberman (1875–1964), “Much in a Basket: VIII,” At the Roots of Grasses, 1923
If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.
—Francis Rabelais
The sun won’t shine until you put the umbrella away. Be free.
—Author unknown
The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.
—Henri Frédéric Amiel
A good speaker is a good listener who hears what lesser speaker fails to.
—Sommers White
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
—Maori Proverb
Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
—Edward de Bono, Observer, June 12, 1977
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Worship,” The Conduct of Life, 1860
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
—Nicholas Chamfort
Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
—Marcus Antonius
Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.
—Chinese Proverb
Nothing is interesting if you’re not interested.
—Helen MacInness
Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.
—Ralph Marston
Don’t find fault. Find a remedy.
—Henry Ford
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
—Theodore Rubin
A bad attitude is like a flat tire. You can’t go anywhere until you change it.
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
—William James
Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, 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 every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the 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 the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
—Chuck Swindoll
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves.
—Alexander Von Humbold
Change
When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.
—Chinese Proverb
Change, before you have to.
—Jack Welch
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
—Woodrow Wilson
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
—Francis Bacon
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
Every beginning is a consequence—every beginning ends something.
—Paul Valery
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
—Harrison Ford
If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
—Kurt Lewin
Changing and actually improving are two quite different skills.
—Dr. SunWolf, 2015 tweet
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
—William Blake
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
—Ellen Glasgow
After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.
—Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, July 3, 1958
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
—Saint Augustine
The goal of any culture is to decay through overcivilization. The factors of decadence—luxury, scepticism, weariness and superstition are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
—Cyril Connolly
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.
—Japanese Proverb
Our only security is our ability to change.
—John Lilly
It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
It’s humbling to start afresh. It takes a lot of courage.... You just have to put your ego on a shelf and tell it to be quiet.
—Jennifer Ritchie Payette
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
—Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
—George Bernard Shaw
Perhaps there should be one day a week when you tackle your “Things I Gotta Undo” list.
—Robert Brault
When you create change you can be wrong, but always believe that you are doing it for the right reasons.
—Richard Gerver
The goal of every culture is to decay through overcivilization; the factors of decadence—luxury, skepticism, weariness, and superstition—are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
—Cyril Connolly
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
—Barack Obama
Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
—Mignon McLaughlin
He who rejects change is the architect of decay.
—Harold Wilson
Things do not change; we change.
—Henry David Thoreau
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
—W. Edwards Deming
If you want to make enemies try to change something.
—Woodrow Wilson
You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.
—Beverly Rubick
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
—Henri Bergson
Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you will understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
—Ellen Glasgow
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.
—Washington Irving
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
—Francis Bacon
The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still.
—Laurence J. Peter
Growth is the only evidence of life.
—John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864
Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.
—Irene Peter
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.
—William H. Seward
Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights.
—Pauline R. Kezer
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
—Francis Bacon, “On Innovation,” Essays, 1597
Few can accept happiness if it means change. We want the life we have now, only happier.
—Robert Brault
Every beginning is a consequence—every beginning ends something.
—Paul Valery
You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.
—Denis Waitley
Character
Character is destiny.
—Heraclitus
The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It’s about what you are made of, not the circumstances.
—Author Unknown
Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits.
—Thomas Hardy
Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after an experience with you is your trademark.
—Author Unknown
Character is higher than intellect.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character but if you must be without one, be without strategy.
—Norman Swartzkopf
Hire for character, train for skills.
—Peter Schutz
A man never discloses his character so clearly as when he describes another’s.
—Jean Paul Richter
Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character. Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul.
—Author Unknown
There is something in every person’s character that cannot be broken—the bony structure of his character.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799)
A man may be born a jackass; but it is his business if he makes himself a double one.
—Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
No man can climb out beyond the limitations of his own character.
—John Morley
Circumstances are moulds in which characters are run.
—James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Fortune does not change men; it unmasks them.
—Suzanne Necker
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
—Ambrose Bierce
There is a great deal of self-will in the world, but very little genuine independence of character.
—Frederick W. Faber
We’re seldom drawn to a character we admire; only to a personality we like.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person who keeps a parrot.
—Mark Twain
Charisma
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
—John C. Maxwell
Charm is... a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
—Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956
Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting people to like themselves when you’re around.
—Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
—Oscar Wilde
Charisma is a fancy name given to the knack of giving people your full attention.
—Robert Brault
When you do common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
—George W. Carver
I want minimum information given with maximum politeness.
—Jackie Kennedy
Confidence
Don’t major in minor things.
—Author unknown
It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.
—Attributed to Hanoch McCarty
If you are going to doubt something, doubt your limits.
—Don Ward
It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
—Epicurus
Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
—Norman Vincent Peale
Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
I quit being afraid when my first venture failed and the sky didn’t fall down.
—Allen H. Neuharth
If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
—Vincent Van Gogh
I will release all the confined forces of my soul and apply them directly to that which I may be. I will release all my thousand possibilities and send them broadside against life.
—Muriel Strode Lieberman (1875–1964), “A Soul’s Faring: XXIV,” A Soul’s Faring, 1921
Success comes in cans, not cant’s.
—Author Unknown
I am not a has-been. I am a will be.
—Lauren Bacall
If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
—Author Unknown
Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.
—Peter T. McIntyre
You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.
—Michael Jordan
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others.
—Mark Twain
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
—Bruce Barton
Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.
—Richard Kline
Sex appeal is fifty percent what you’ve got and fifty percent what people think you’ve got.
—Sophia Loren
If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
—Henrik Ibsen
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.
—Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly
Pay no attention to what the critics say. A statue has never been erected in honor of a critic.
—Jean Sibelius
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
—African proverb
Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
—Gene Fowler, Skyline, 1961
Courage
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
—Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969
Courage is knowing what not to fear.
—Plato
I will win not immediately but definitely.
—Author Unknown
A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.
—Sydney Smith
If you get tired learn to rest, not quit.
—Author Unknown
Optimism is the foundation of courage.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius
Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.
—Raymond Lindquis
It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
—Mark Twain
Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain.
—Diane de Poitiers
It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
—Sally Kempton, Esquire, 1970
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.
—Mary Anne Radmacher
Your value is the product of your thoughts. Do not miscalculate your self-worth by multiplying your insecurities.
—Dodinsky
Courage is a love affair with the unknown.
—Osho
Bravery is being the only one who knows you’re afraid.
—Franklin P. Jones
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
—Mark Twain
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
—Winston Churchill
My endurance may be born of courage, but I will not forget that it may also be born of that most pitiable of human things—weakness.
—Muriel Strode-Lieberman (1875–1964), My Little Book of Life, 1912
Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.
—Samuel Johnson
Necessity does the work of courage.
—Nicholas Murray Butler
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
—G.K. Chesterton
Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
—Horace Smith
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
—Jean Paul Richter
It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
—A.A. Hodge
Decisions
May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.
—Nelson Mandela
Unsuccessful people make decisions based on their current situation. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be.
—Author Unknown
It is only in our decisions that we are important.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
Life is the sum of all your choices.
—Albert Camus
A mistake repeated more than once is a decision.
—Paolo Coelho
You are the CEO of your own life. Start making executive decisions today.
—Stephen Luke
When you have to make a tough decision flip a coin. Why? Because when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for.
—Author Unknown
Never base your life decisions on advice from people who don’t have to deal with the results.
If decision-making is a science, judgement is an art.
—Author Unknown
A wise man makes his own decisions. An ignorant man follows public opinion.
—Chinese Proverb
Design is nothing, if not decision-making.
—Henry Petroski
You are always one decision away from a totally different life.
—Author Unknown
I try not to make decisions I am not excited about.
—Jake Nickell
It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.
—Warren Buffett
You are free to choose but you are not free from the consequence of your choice.
—Author Unknown
Learn to say “no” to the good, so you can say “yes” to the best.
—John C. Maxwell
With time, our indecisions become decisions that life takes for us.
—Roxana Jones
Excellence represents the wise choice of many alternatives. Choice, not chance determines your destiny.
—Aristotle
One of the hardest parts of life is deciding whether to walk away or try harder.
—Author Unknown
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.
—Flora Whittemore
To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect.
—Lu Xun
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
—David Russell
Making a decision takes a moment. Living a decision takes a lifetime.
—A. El-Mawardy
Some persons are very decisive when it comes to avoiding decisions.
—Brendan Francis
It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.
—Roy Disney
Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions.
—Author Unknown
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
—Mark Twain
When one bases his life on principle, 99 percent of his decisions are already made.
—Author Unknown
Effort
Those at the top of the mountain didn’t fall there.
—Author Unknown
Sweat is the cologne of accomplishment.
—Heywood Hale Broun
About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.
—Gloria Pitzer
I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.
—Larry Bird
Put in 5% more effort than “there’s only so much I can do” and you’ll be way ahead of the game.
—Terri Guillemets
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Character is what emerges from all the little things you were too busy to do yesterday, but did anyway.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.
—Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
—William James
Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt.
—José Ortega y Gassett
To eat an egg, you must break the shell.
—Jamaican Proverb
Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
—Swami Sivananda
Men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own arm.
—Sidney J. Phillips
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
—Abraham Lincoln
Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.
—Margaret Thatcher
The only thing that ever sat its way to success was a hen.
—Sarah Brown
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
—Emile Zola
You’re either changing your life or you’re not. No waiting for this or that or better weather or other hurdles. Hurdles are the change.
—Terri Guillemets
No matter what it is, if you aren’t happy striving for it, you won’t be happy achieving it.
—Robert Brault
People know you for what you’ve done, not for what you plan to do.
—Author Unknown
We gain no easier advantage than by relentlessly pursuing our goal while others pursue an advantage.
—Robert Brault
Focus
The main thing is to keep the main thing the man thing.
—Stephen Covey
Sometimes we must unfocus our way to clarity.
—Terri Guillemets
Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
—José Ortega y Gasset
An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward. When life is dragging you back with difficulties, it means it’s going to launch you into something great. So just focus, and keep aiming.
—Author unknown
Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.
—Stephen Covey
The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
—Julia Margaret Cameron
Your priorities are your character.
—Author Unknown
Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
—Nadia Boulanger
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
—Henry Miller
The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling.
—Orison Marden
Genius
Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
—Robert Schumann
Men of genius are meteors destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, Discours de Lyon, 1771
Every great genius has an admixture of madness.
—Aristotle
Genius is childhood recovered at will.
—Charles Baudelaire
The function of genius is not to give new answers but to pose new questions – which time and mediocrity can solve.
—Hugh Trevor Roper
An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
—William Bernbach
So much of our time is preparation, so much is routine, and so much retrospect, that the path of each man’s genius contracts itself to a very few hours.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius.
—Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.
—Albert Einstein
Talent is that which is in a man’s power; genius is that in whose power a man is.
—James Russell Lowell, Literary Essays
Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others.
—Mark Twain
I put all my genius into my life. I put only my talent into my works.
—Oscar Wilde
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale, 1849
Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.
—Josh Billings
Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.
—Eugene Delacroix
A genius is someone who has two great ideas.
—Jacob Bronowski
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his ideas closer together.
—G.H. Lichtenberg
Nothing has been more difficult than to be curious about an object or a person, without being obstructed by preconceived ideas. Occasionally the veil is lifted, and the one who lifts it is called a genius.
—Theodore Zeldin
The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar.
—Aristotle
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
—E.F. Schumacher
The ideal is the enemy of the possible.
—Dr. Idel Dreimer
Mankind aspires to a perfection not permitted by his genetic legacy—nor by the competitive necessities of his circumstance. He is condemned to endless aspiration—a persistent purgatory of failed ideals.
—Dr. Idel Dreimer
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
—Henry L. Mencken
It’s a cruel world: idealistic dreams usually end up costing as much as regular stupidity.
—Dr. Idel Dreimer
Quality marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.
—John Ruskin
It is a golden rule that one should never judge men by their opinions, but rather by what these opinions lead them to be.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799), translated by Norman Alliston, 1908
We have our ideals now, but when they are mentioned we feel self-conscious and uncomfortable, like a school-boy caught praying.
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931)
Living up to ideals is like doing everyday work with your Sunday clothes on.
—Ed Howe
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
—John Galsworthy
A man of personality can form ideals but only a person of character can achieve them.
—Herbert Read
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals.
—G.K. Chesterton
Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.
—Israel Zangwill, speech, November 13, 1892
The soul mounts ever toward nobler things, but seldom is it strong enough to carry along with it the human clay.
—Bernard G. Richard, “Life and the Theories of Life,” To Morrow, June 1905
Our ideals, like the gods of old, are constantly demanding human sacrifices.
—George Bernard Shaw
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.
—G.K. Chesterton
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
—Samuel Ullman
Imagination
Everything you can imagine is real.
—Pablo Picasso
Imagination is intelligence with an erection.
—Victor Hugo
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
—Henry David Thoreau
To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.
—William Shakespeare
Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be.
—Dennis Gunton
When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
—Tuli Kupferberg
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud
I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
—Theodore Geisel
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
—Jessamyn West
The strongest nation on earth is your imagi-nation.
—Matt Furey
Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
—Lewis Carroll
I admit to having an imagination feverish enough to melt good judgment.
—Dean R. Koontz, Seize the Night
Some stories are true that never happened.
—Elie Weisel
Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
—Francisco Goya
Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.
—Norman Podhoretz
The man who can’t visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
—André Breton
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “Eleonora”
Don’t expect anything original from an echo.
—Author Unknown
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
—G.K. Chesterton
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
—George Smith Patton, War as I Knew It, 1947
Imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid.
—Sir James Frazer
The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.
—Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
—Pablo Picasso
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.
—George Scialabba
I am now and have always been a stranger to the realm of practical matters.
—Anton Chekhov
Integrity
Never rob your character to enrich your pocket.
—James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
—Will Rogers
Integrity has no need of rules.
—Albert Camus
The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
—B.C. Forbes
You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest.
—Robert Brault
Take care that no one hates you justly.
—Publilius Syrus
To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.
—Confucius
There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.
—French Proverb
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
—Henry David Thoreau
There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
And that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
—Ogden Nash
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. But if you don’t have the first, the other two could kill you.
—Warren Buffett
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
—William Safire
Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.
—J.C. Watts
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
—George Bernard Shaw
Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
—Aristotle
One does evil enough when one does nothing good.
—German Proverb
The time is always right to do what is right.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Character is much easier kept than recovered.
—Thomas Paine
The only exercise some people get is jumping to conclusions, running down their friends, side-stepping responsibility, and pushing their luck!
—Author Unknown
Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.
—Chinese Proverb
Conscience warns us before it reproaches us.
—Comtesse Diane (Marie Josephine de Suin de Beausacq), Maximes de la vie, 1908
To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.
—Will Durant
If we are ever in doubt what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done.
—John Lubbock, “The Happiness of Duty,” 1887
Let me be thankful first, because I never was robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourthly, because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.
—Matthew Henry (1662–1714)
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!
—Isaac Asimov
I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Every time I’ve done something that doesn’t feel right, it’s ended up not being right.
—Mario Cuomo
The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology.
—Red Auerbach
If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
—Immanuel Hermass von Fichte
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.
—Thomas Jefferson
I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can.
—Michel de Montaigne, translated
There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.
—Robert Brault
It’s impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time.
—Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a devil.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
—Mark Twain
When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
—Max Lerner, Actions and Passions, 1949
Aspire to a lower level of harm.
—Terri Guillemets
Intelligence
Common sense is not so common.
—Voltaire
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
—Albert Einstein
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.
—Emerson M. Pugh
The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.
—Albert Einstein
No matter the situation, never let your emotions overpower your intelligence.
—Jean Houston
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
—Lao Tzu (604–531 BC)
We should not only use the brains we have, but all that we can borrow.
—Woodrow Wilson
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
—Albert Einstein
If the Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
—Stanley Garn
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.
—John Henry Cardinal Newman
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
—Sigmund Freud
Primitive does not mean stupid.
—S.A. Sach
Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.
—Linus Torvalds
It is hard to challenge an idiot idea, because people think you’re challenging their right to idiocy.
—Robert Brault
Intelligence is like underwear. It is important that you have it, but not necessary that you show it off.
—Author Unknown
Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.
—George Santayana
Instinct is the nose of the mind.
—Delphine de Girardin
Intuition is what you know for sure without knowing for certain.
—Weston Agor
Intuition is the new physics. It’s an Einsteinian seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and trust their intuition.
—Tom Peters
We all have spiritual DNA; wisdom and truth are part of our genetic structure even if we don’t always access it.
—Lama Surya Das
Instead of penetrating the mystery we let ourselves be penetrated by the mystery.
—Wendy Palmer
Instinct is untaught ability.
—Alexander Bainon. Tom Peters
Logic, which alone can give certainty, is the instrument of demonstration; intuition is the instrument of invention.
—Henri Poincare
A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.
—Jawaharlal Nehru
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
—Rumi
Life is a school where you learn how to remember what your soul already knows.
—Author Unknown
Intuition is instinct humanized.
—F.B. Dowd
I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason.
—Stanley Baldwin
Knowledge
Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.
—Panchatantra
Seek knowledge, even if it be in China.
—Muhammad, the Koran
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
—Confucius
If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions.
—Susanne K. Langer
Knowledge is haunted by the ghost of past opinion.
—Author Unknown
I am not young enough to know everything.
—J.M. Barrie
Abundance of knowledge does not teach men to be wise.
—Heraclitus
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.
—Michael Garrett Marin
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
—Lord Alfred Tennyson
Since we cannot know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything.
—Blaise Pascal
It’s silly when any man assumes that he knows it all. It’s tragic when he does!
—Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.
—Woody Allen
The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers
To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates.
—Abbott Lawrence Lowell
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
—Ralph W. Sockman
Knowledge has a beginning but no end.
—Geeta S. Iyengar
Know Thy Self
Search others for their virtue, and yourself for your vices.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark.
—Zen Proverb
He who knows others is learned;
He who knows himself is wise.
—Lao-tzu, Tao te Ching
Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.
—Matthew Arnold
You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you.
—Rwandan Proverb
Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.
—St. Augustine
Know thyself, or at least keep renewing the acquaintance.
—Robert Brault
Always do right. That will gratify some of the people and astonish the rest.
—Mark Twain
He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.
—William Penn
Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
—Walter Bagehot
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.
—Mark Twain
I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.
—Dwight Lyman Moody
When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself.
—Deepak Chopra
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
—Michel de Montaigne
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
—Henry David Thoreau
Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.
—Robert Brault
Take the time to come home to yourself every day.
—Robin Casarjean
I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.
—Martin Luther
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
You grow up the day you have your first real laugh, at yourself.
—Ethel Barrymore
Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgment.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
—Buddha
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
—Douglas Adams
Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man—the biography of the man himself cannot be written.
—Mark Twain, Autobiography, 1924
We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.
—Lynn Hall
One day I will count my possessions, and they will include me.
—Muriel Strode
Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
—William Faulkner
Just let awareness have its way with you completely.
—Scott Morrison
There is part of us that stands in quiet witness to what we do, taking notes, waiting for a solitary moment to bring up the subject.
—Robert Brault
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
—Michel de Montaigne
We confess to little faults only to persuade ourselves that we have no great ones.
—François VI de la Rochefoucault, Maxims
There comes a morning in life when you wake up a new person; that is to say, you wake up the same person but you realize it’s your own fault.
—Robert Brault
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh, 1849
I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
—Buckminster Fuller
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven.
—William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
—Henry Miller
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The things we hate about ourselves aren’t more real than things we like about ourselves.
—Ellen Goodman
If you are tuned out of your own emotions, you will be poor at reading them in other people.
—Daniel Goleman
Once your awareness becomes a flame, it burns up the whole slavery that the mind has created.
—Osho
Other people’s opinion of you does not have to become your reality.
—Les Brown
Self-love seems so often unrequited.
—Anthony Powell
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
—Dr. Seuss
Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember—the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
—Zig Ziglar
I am,
indeed,
a king,
because I know how
to rule myself.
—Pietro Aretino, 1537
Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
—Michel de Montaigne
Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
—Elbert Hubbard, A Thousand and One Epigrams, 1911
One of the “lost arts” is that of minding one’s own business.
—James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher’s Stone, 1882
God may forgive your sins, but your nervous system won’t.
—Alfred Korzyybski
If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits oneself, life would be unbearable.
—Georges Courteline, La philosophie de Georges Courteline, 1917
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
—Garrison Keillor
Put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard.
—Anne Sexton
Mind
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them and strong enough to correct them.
—John C. Maxwell
How long has it been since someone touched part of you other than your body?
—Terri Guillemets
The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it’s not open.
—Frank Zappa
Be very, very careful what you put into that head because you will never, ever get it out.
—Cardinal Wolsey
Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood and you shouldn’t go in there alone at night.
—Christiane Northrup
Every time you think the problem is ‘out there,’ that very thought is the problem.
—Stephen Covey
To he who is right in mind, he can do all the wrong things and it will still turn out right. To he who is wrong in mind, he can do all the right things and it will still turn out wrong.
—Derek Rydall
Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.
—Iara Gassen
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
The best cure for the body is a quiet mind.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.
—Andrew Carnegie
Mother Nature is the most powerful force on the planet—but in the human realm, it’s the Mind.
—Terri Guillemets
Here in your mind you have complete privacy. Here there’s no difference between what is and what could be.
—Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
To a mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.
—Zhuangzi
I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our mind growled like our stomach does when it is hungry?
—Zig Ziglar
The vacation we often need is freedom from our own mind.
—Jack Adam Weber
You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.
—Harriet Woods
You’re picky about the car you drive. You’re picky about what you wear. You’re picky about what you put in your mouth. We want you to be pickier about what you think.
—Abraham-Hicks
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
—Aristotle
Men harm others by their deeds, themselves by their thoughts.
—Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows.
—John Powell
What is right is often forgotten by what is convenient.
—Bodie Thoene, Warsaw Requiem
It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
—Buddha
Pain of mind is worse than pain of body.
—Latin Proverb
Misery is almost always the result of thinking.
—Joseph Joubert
Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.
—Charles Caleb Colton
What if there are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but two psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go through life like Siamese twins inside one person.
—Norman Mailer, Harlot’s Ghost, 1991
Don’t let it be all in your head, nor all in your body.
—Terri Guillemets
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
—Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
—George Santayana
Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People.
—Socrates
Our life is shaped by our mind. We become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it.
—Buddha
The mind sleeps in the mineral kingdom, breathes in the vegetable kingdom, dreams in the animal kingdom and awakes in man.
—Teilhard de Chardin
Perseverance
Great souls have wills, feeble ones have only wishes.
—Chinese Proverb
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
—Albert Einstein
The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won’t.
—Henry Ward Beecher
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
He conquers who endures.
—Persius
Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
The only thing that stands between a man and what he wants from life is often the will to try it and the faith to believe that it is possible.
—Richard M. Devos
Stubbornly persist, and you will find that the limits of your stubbornness go well beyond the stubbornness of your limits.
—Robert Brault
Saints were sinners who kept on going.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.
—Aleister Crowley
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
—Walter Elliott
The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.
—Author Unknown
Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.
—Newt Gingrich
If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success; if you don’t, you have achieved half your failure.
—David Ambrose
Sometimes you feel like giving up, but then you look at other people who have given up, and the results aren’t that good.
—Robert Brault
It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.
—James Gordon
While I might find pleasure in your approval, your disapproval will not deter me.
—Muriel Strode
I am convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
—Steve Jobs
Fall seven times, stand up eight.
—Japanese Proverb
There is no telling how many miles you will have to run while chasing a dream.
—Author Unknown
But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
One may go a long way after one is tired.
—French proverb
You can’t go through life quitting everything. If you’re going to achieve anything, you’ve got to stick with something.
—Author Unknown
If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.
—Buddhist Saying
Perspective
If you do not raise your eyes you will think that you are the highest point.
—Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
—John Lubbock
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.
—G.K. Chesterton
A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.
—Samuel Butler
Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.
—Tom Stoppard
It isn’t so much that hard times are coming; the change observed is mostly soft times going.
—Groucho Marx
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.
—H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.
—Chinese Proverb
Every man regards his own life as the New Year’s Eve of time.
—Jean Paul Richter
Advertising is selling Twinkies to adults.
—Donald R. Vance
At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants eat fish.
—Thai Proverb
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
If you think you are too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.
—Anita Roddick
Exceptions do not always prove the rule; they may be even the first germs of a new rule.
—Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882
The reverse side also has a reverse side.
—Japanese Proverb
The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.
—Author Unknown
There’s an alternative. There’s always a third way, and it’s not a combination of the other two ways. It’s a different way.
—David Carradine
Eventually you realize that not all opposing viewpoints come from people who oppose you.
—Robert Brault
An exhibitionist is nothing without a voyeur.
—S.A. Sachs
An unattempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.
—Michel de Montaigne
Nothing’s a gift, it’s all on loan.
—Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), “Nothing’s a Gift,” The End and the Beginning, 1993, translated from the Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
—Joseph Joubert
Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan
If a man could have half his wishes accomplished, he would double his troubles.
—Benjamin Franklin
I’m right-handed, whereas the fellow in my mirror is left-handed. I start shaving from the left; he starts from the right. Differences only in perception, but religious wars have been fought over such.
—Robert Brault
Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
—David Dunham
The ancient law ‘an eye for an eye’ will make all people blind. It is immoral because it is trying to subdue the enemy, and not to achieve his understanding. It seeks to destroy, not to win over.
—Martin Luther King
In the ideal sense nothing is uninteresting; there are only uninterested people.
—Brooks Atkinson
The poor never estimate as a virtue the generosity of the rich.
—Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), translated by Mrs Annis Lee Wister, 1882
Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain’t never killed nobody.
—Moms Mabley
No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
—Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1935
Don’t think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to keep a total stranger alive. It’s really a total stranger giving up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive.
—Author Unknown
People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped.
—Author Unknown
There is no burnt rice to a hungry person.
—Philippine Proverb
But such a tiny and trivial thing as an umbrella can deprive you of the sight of such a stupendous fact as the sun.
—Meher Baba
The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food.
—Russian proverb
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
Each act is virgin, even the repeated ones.
—René Char
Disappointment is as inevitable as hope is necessary.
—Dr. Idel Dreimer
The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.
—Sid Caesar
If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush.
—Dawn French
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, “Studies in Pessimism,” Psychological Observations, 1851
Events and external objects are, so to speak, but a neutral substance, which receives its colour and its significance from our soul.
—Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)
The shadows: some hide, others reveal.
—Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
An abridgement may be a bridge: it may help us over the water: but it keeps us from drinking.
—Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
The most amazing things that can happen to a human being will happen to you, if you just lower your expectations.
—“Phil’s-osophy” by Phil Dunphy (Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan, and Dan O’Shannon, Modern Family, “Schooled,” original airdate October 10, 2010)
Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.
—H.L. Mencken
If you see a whole thing—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Everything is best until we know better.
—James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.
—Bill Copeland
The measure of a man is what he does with power.
—Plato
Mastering others is strength, mastering oneself is true power.
—Lao Tzu
Power doesn’t corrupt people. People corrupt power.
—William Gaddis
We know that anyone ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
—George Orwell
Power is domination, control and therefore a very selective form or truth, which is a lie.
—Wole Soyinka
Such a waste of talent. He chose money over power. In this town a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference.
—House of Cards, Political Drama TV series
Power is domination, control and therefore a very selective form or truth, which is a lie.
—Wole Soyinka
We have the best government that money can buy.
—Mark Twain
Make the best of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.
—Epictetus
The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.
—Bruce Lee
Skepticism, like wisdom, springs out in full panoply only from the brain of a god, and it is little profit to see an idea in its growth, unless we track its seed to the power which sowed it.
—James Anthony Froude
When you choose to forgive those who have hurt you, you take away their power.
—Author Unknown
Democracy is the best school to learn soft power.
—Joseph Nye
No one is you and that is your power.
—Author Unknown
Purpose
The man who is happy is fulfilling the purpose of existence.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
—Robert Byrne
A useless life is an early death.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years, and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation.
—George Bernard Shaw
Everything happens for a reason. If you can’t find a reason for something, there’s a reason for that.
—Chris Levi
I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
—Norman Mailer
If Heaven made him—earth can find some use for him.
—Chinese Proverb
When you walk in purpose, you collide with destiny.
—Ralph Buchanan
Purpose is understanding why you do what you do. Purpose will wake you up early and keep you up late.
—Author Unknown
Every morning is destiny’s way of telling you that your purpose in life is yet to be fulfilled.
—Author Unknown
There is one thing we all must do. If we do everything else but that one thing, we will be lost. And if we do nothing else but that one thing, we will have lived a glorious life.
—Rumi
An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—José Ortega y Gasset
Do not promote products. Promote their purpose.
—Michael Kouly
Every man is visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn’t got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady’s watch are revolving more purposely than he is.
—James Thurber
If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?
—Steve Jobs
I don’t know why we are here but I am pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
You can accept reality, or you can persist in your purpose until reality accepts you.
—Robert Brault
To have no set purpose in one’s life is the harlotry of the will.
—Stephen MacKenna
Man’s ideal state is realized when he has fulfilled the purpose for which he is born. And what is it that reason demands of him? Something very easy – that he lives in accordance to his own nature.
—Seneca
In the dim background of our mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.
—William James
If you ask me why I came to this earth, I’ll tell you: I came to live out loud.
—Emile Zola
To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
—Alan Coren, The Sanity Inspector, 1974
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Reputation
The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.
—Japanese Proverb
Live in such a way that, if someone spoke badly of you, no one would believe it.
—Author Unknown
You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.
—Henry Ford
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, often got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser.
—William Shakespeare
Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.
—Elbert Hubbard
Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked and never well-mended.
—Benjamin Franklin
Worry about your character rather than your reputation, because your character is who you are and your reputation only what people think of you.
—Author Unknown
You can’t buy a good reputation. You must earn it.
—Harvey Mackay
My reputation was a bit exaggerated. Things were written in newspapers, then copied, the doubled. One of the reasons I never disclaimed that, was because I found it amusing. But I also constructed such an image for myself in order to gain more of a private life.
—Thomas Kretschmann
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
—Logan Pearsall Smith
Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
—Abraham Lincoln
Reputation is character minus what you’ve been caught doing.
—Michael Iapoce, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Boardroom
Your brand is what other people say when you are not in the room.
—Jeff Bezos
Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.
—Robert Bresson
Strategy
You cannot change your destination overnight but you can change your direction.
—Jim Rohn
Every battle is won before it is fought.
—Sun Tzu
I base my calculations on the expectation that luck will be against me.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
A vision without a strategy remains an illusion.
—Lee Bolman
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
—Sun Tzu
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
—Jack Welch
There is no avoiding war. It can only be postponed to the advantage of the others.
—Niccolo Machiavelli
You must take your opponent into a dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.
—Mikhail Tal, World chess champion
Strategy is not the consequence of planning but its starting point.
—Henry Mitzberg
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
—Stephen Covey
Life is a game board. Time is your opponent. If you procrastinate, you will lose the game. You must take the move to be victorious.
—Napoleon Hill
Pick out industries that don’t have celebrities—then become the first one. Big ponds are overrated.
—Scott Ginsberg
Sometimes you must cross a bridge and other times you need to burn it.
—Dodinsky
The offenses one does to a man should be such that one does not fear revenge for it.
—Nicolo Machiavelli
Advice to big business: Don’t buy the patent; hire the guy who got it.
—Martin H. Fischer
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.
—Jay Leno
Without knowledge, skill cannot be focused. Without skill strength cannot be brought to bar and without strength, knowledge my not be applied.
—Alexander the Great
Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.
—Savielly Tartakower
Without strategy execution is aimless, without execution strategy is useless.
—Morris Chang
Hope is not a strategy.
—Author Unknown
Effort and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
—J.F. Kennedy
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.
—Michael Porter
Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Strategy is thinking about a choice and choosing to stick with your thinking.
—Jeroen De Flander
A fine line separates a fighter from a warrior. One is motivated by reason, the other, by purpose. One fights to live, the other lives to fight.
—Author Unknown
The difference between what you are and what you want to be is what you do.
—Author Unknown
Each step in the right direction allows you to see further in that direction.
—Tom Ziglar
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
—Seneca
Lack of direction not lack of time is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
—Author Unknown
Sometimes I feel like I’m going nowhere, in opposite directions.
—Terri Guillemets
When everything is coming your way, you are in the wrong lane.
—Author Unknown
Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
—Stephen Covey
Amateurs talk tactics, dilettantes talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.
—Author Unknown
If you don’t have the time to do it right what makes you think you’ll have the time to do it over?
—Seth Godin
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
—Sun Tzu
Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it.
—Frank Muir
If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.
—Toni Morrison
The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
—Ben Stein
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
—Sun Tzu
You must do fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Strategy requires thought, tactics requires observation.
—Max Euve
Vision
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
—Helen Keller
We are gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make “me too” products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.
—Steve Jobs
Vision is but a picture of the future that produces passion.
—Bill Hybels
Vision stands on the shoulders of what is actual to get a better view of what is possible.
—Mary Ann Radmacker
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
—Jonathan Swift
A vision is often something that nags inside you and becomes so insistent that you must act upon it.
—Richard Gerver
I dream. I test my dreams against my beliefs. I dare to take risks and I execute my vision to make those dreams come true.
—Walt Disney
Leadership is having a vision, sharing that vision and inspiring others to support your vision while creating their own.
—Mindy Gibbins-Klein
If you don’t have a vision you’re going to be stuck in what you know. And the only thing you know is what you’ve already seen.
—Iyanla Vanzant
Vision is a destination, a fixed point to which we focus all effort. Strategy is a root – an adaptable path to get us where we want to go.
—Simon Sinek
A man without vision for his future, always returns to his past.
—Author Unknown
Stop expecting your job to fund your vision. Your vision is probably bigger than your paycheck.
—Bishop TD Jakes
Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.
—Oprah Winfrey
If you can’t find any joy I life, perhaps you have a vision problem.
—Tim Fargo
Wisdom
Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
—Terry Pratchett
Where fear is present, wisdom cannot be.
—Lactantius
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
—David Star Jordan, The Philosophy of Despair
The wise are always at peace.
—Arabic Proverb
The wise man can pick up a grain of sand and envision a whole universe.
—Jack Handey
Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself.
—Tom Wilson
We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
—Marcel Proust
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much, wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
—William Cowper
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
—Kahlil Gibran
Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
—Robert A. Heinlein
It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say, and then don’t say it.
—Sam Levenson
He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but it seemed as if all of it had gone down the wrong way.
—G.C. Lichtenberg
We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.
—Michel de Montaigne
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
—Plato
Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.
—Gabriel Garcia
A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence.
—David Hume (1711–1776)
Sometimes one likes foolish people for their folly, better than wise people for their wisdom.
—Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865)
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1972)
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
—Abraham Lincoln
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: The music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
Wisdom is meaningless until your own experience has given it meaning... and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.
1 Dialogue from Source of the History of Western Civilization, p. 151.
2 The 80/20 principle is known as the path of least effort to maximum results. It was named after economist Vilfredo Pareto. It specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.