Quotes of Intellectuals

don't think much of a man who is not wiser today
than he was yesterday
-- Abraham Lincoln --

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken --

You'll never leave where you are,
until you decide where you’d rather be.
-- Robert Brockman --

Effective people are not problem-minded;
they're opportunity-minded.
They feed opportunities and starve problems.
-- Dr. Stephen Covey --

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-- Aristotle --

You can't get different results by doing things the same way.
-- Richard A. Moran --

Telling ain’t teaching
and listening ain’t learning.
-- Bob Barkley --

The fact that an opinion has been widely held
is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
-- Bertrand Russell --

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

What isn't tried . . . won't work.
-- Claude McDonald --

You can get everything you want in life,
if you just help enough other people get what they want.
-- Zig Ziglar --

Learning is not attained by chance.
It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.
-- Abigail Adams --

The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men -- the man he is and the man he wants to be.
-- William Feather --

The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Keep this constantly in mind.
Weak desire brings weak results,
just as a small amount of fire
makes a small amount of heat.
-- Napoleon Hill --

Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.
-- Jim Rohn --

Kites rise highest against the wind,
not with it.
-- Winston Churchill --

The mind is not a vessel to be filled,
but a fire to be lighted.
-- Plutarch --

It takes great courage to faithfully follow
what we know is true.
-- Sara E Anderson --

I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.
-- Philip Dusenberry --

What helps people, helps business.
-- Leo Burnett --

Every day do something that will
inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
-- Doug Firebaugh --

Obstacles can't stop you. Problems can't stop you.
Most of all other people can't stop you.
Only you can stop you.
-- Jeffrey Gitomer --

Human beings have the remarkable ability
to turn nothing into something.
They can turn weeds into gardens
and pennies into fortunes.
-- Jim Rohn --

If you have great ideas and no confidence to share them,
you will not get credit for having them.
-- Patricia Fripp --

Always bear in mind
that your own resolution to succeed
is more important than any other one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln --

Our plans miscarry if they have no aim.
When a man does not know what harbor he is making for,
no wind is the right wind.
-- Seneca --

All lasting wealth comes from
enriching others in some way.
-- Brian Tracy --

If someone is going down the wrong road,
he doesn't need motivation to speed him up,
he needs education to turn him around.
-- Jim Rohn --

You don't have to be great to get started,
but you have to get started to be great.
-- Les Brown --

The difference between failure and success
is doing a thing nearly right and doing a thing exactly right.
-- Edward Simmons --


You can accomplish virtually anything
if you want it badly enough
and if you are willing to work
long enough and hard enough.
-- Brian Tracy --

Goals are a preview of future events
and experiences in your life.
-- Mark Victor Hansen --

The difference between a successful person and others
is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge,
but rather a lack of will.
-- Vincent T. Lombardi --


Something must die in order to grow
- your old habits, your old self image,
your old thinking, your old life -
must be weeded out for the seeds of success to grow.
-- Doug Firebaugh --

People begin to become successful
the minute they decide to be.
-- Harvey Mackay --

A mind once expanded by a new idea,
Never returns to its original dimensions.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes --

It is not your customer's job to remember you.
It is your obligation and responsibility
to make sure they don't have the chance to forget you.
-- Patricia Fripp --

Give a man a fish and he eats for one day.
Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.
-- Anonymous --

You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset.
-- Tom Hopkins --

You do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.
-- Patricia Fripp --

You'll never make it to the next level by holding on to the first.
-- Rod St.Hilaire --

Failing to plan means planning to fail.
What are your goals?
-- Brian Tracy --

The obscure we eventually see.
The completely obvious, it seems, takes much longer.
-- Edward R. Murrow --

Good things only happen when planned.
Bad things happen on their own.
-- Phillip Crosby --

There are those who SEE an opportunity
And then there are those who SEIZE an opportunity
-- Joanie Warren --

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight
But they while their companions slept
Were toiling upwards in the night.
-- Longfellow --

Don't get discouraged;
It's usually the last key in the bunch that opens the lock.
-- Author Unknown --

I've learned one thing during my time on the soccer fields:
It's amazing how fast you can run
And the things you can do when you have a goal in mind.
It applies to the rest of my life, too.
-- Jeremy Monnin --

No person was ever honored for what he received.
Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
-- Author Unknown --

The only competition you will ever have
is the competition between your
disciplined and undisciplined mind.
-- James A. Ray --

Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Gandhi

I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think - Socrates

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. -
Winston Churchill

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough we must do. - Goethe

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." - John Powell

You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself. - Galileo Galilei

Learning is not a spectator sport. - D. Blocher

The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning - truth that has been assimilated in experience. - Carl Rogers

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. - Albert Einstein

The teacher if he is indeed wise does not teach bid you to enter the house of wisdom but leads you to the threshold of your own mind. - Kahlil Gilbran, Lebanese symbolist poet and painter

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event. - Edward Gibbon
ìMemoirs of my Lifeì (1796)

Retention is best when the learner is involved. - Edward Scannell, director, University Conference Bureau, Arizona

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him. - Oscar Wilde, ìLord Fermor, in The Picture of Dorian Grayî (1891)

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. - Mark Twain.

It takes two to speak the truth,--one to speak, and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes. - Marcel Proust, French novelist

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires - William Arthur Ward

The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher. - John Holt

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. - B. F. Skinner

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching. - Oscar Wilde "The Decay of Lying"

Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
-Edward Young

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz

The road to wisdom?-Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again
but less
and less
and less.
- Piet Hein, Danish inventor and poet.


To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.
- Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.), Legendary Chinese philosopher.

Some are born with knowledge, some derive it from study, and some acquire it only after a painful realization of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some study with a natural ease, some from a desire for advantages, and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being made, it comes to the same thing. - Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius)

When you know something, say what you know. When you don't know something, say that you don't know. That is knowledge." - Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius)

What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand.
- Kung Fu Tzu (Confucius)

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul. - Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), British novelist. The Journals of Arnold Bennett (1932), entry for 18 March 1897.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. . .
If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. - Mao Zedong (1893-1976), founder of the People's Republic of China. Speech, July 1937, Yenan, China.

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught. - Luc Vauvenargues, Marquis de (1715-47), French moralist. ReflÈxions et Maximes, no. 479 (1746).

Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is intellectual death. - Confucius (551-479 B.C.)

To know yet to think that one does not know is best;
Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. - Lao-Tzu (6th century B.C.), Legendary Chinese philosopher. Tao-te-ching, bk. 2, ch. 71 (tr. by T. C. Lau, 1963).

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. - Mark Van Doren, poet

The most important part of teaching = to teach what it is to know. - Simone Weil (1909-43), French philosopher, mystic. London Notebook (written 1943, published 1950; repr. in First and Last Notebooks, pt. 4, ed. by Richard Rees, 1970).

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well. - Henri-FrÈdÈric Amiel (1821-81), Swiss philosopher, poet. Journal Intime (1882; tr. by Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1892), entry for 27 Oct. 1853.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain

If the past cannot teach the present and the father cannot teach the son, then history need not have bothered to go on, and the world has wasted a great deal of time. Russell Hoban (b. 1925), U.S. author. - Jachin-Boaz, in The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz, ch. 1 (1973).

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight. - Thomas Calyle, Scottish essayist and historian

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. - Arthur C. Clarke

Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done. - Rudolph Flesch

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me. - Dudley Field Malone

I think, therefore I am (Cogito, ergo sum.) - Descartes