While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.
~~ Helen Keller ~~ (1880-1968)
This is definitely true. Many, many times dedicated individuals, with their determination and perseverance, have accomplished tasks that nobody thought could be accomplished. There is a great lesson here for all of us. We can accomplish our goals if we believe in them and are prepared to make determined, persistent efforts even though others around us may say it can’t be done.
The story of Helen Keller’s life in itself is a great example of what can be accomplished. She was left blind and deaf at the age of just 19 months due to an illness. In spite of all these odds stacked against her since such an early childhood, Helen - with the help of her dedicated teacher Anne Sullivan, made astonishing accomplishments and went on to become world famous.
The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
~~ Henry Youngman ~~(1906 - 1998)
Ha, ha. Some secret codes are hard to crack. :-)
I think there is no secret to a happy marriage because a vast majority of marriages are happy only for a little while. After that it’s anything but happy. I believe it’s just in the nature of humans. They are not happy with anything or anybody for long; doesn’t matter how good that thing or body may be. Most of us are always looking for smething new! That’s why extra-marital affairs are so prevalent.
Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.
~~ Henry Ford ~~ (1863 - 1947)
Funny and yet so true! You get warmed twice if you chop your own wood because you get warmed when you chop it and you’ll get warmed the second time when you light fire with it.
So what does it really mean? It means that when you apply yourself to accomplish tasks, you feel better just like you get warmed when you chop wood. And what you accomplish today will be useful in future as well.
When we are born we cry that we have come to this great stage of fools.
~~ William Shakespeare ~~ (1564 - 1616)
Now that’s a good one as you would expect from William Shakespeare. LOL. I never thought of it that way. I have been under the wrong impression that we cry so that we can start breathing! Shakespeare obviously has a great point: Who wouldn’t cry when they realize that they have come to the great stage of fools! :-)
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.
~~ Mark Twain ~~ (1835 - 1910)
It’s very true and even more true now-a-days. We like to eat goodies like chips, ice cream etc. but these are definitely not good for our health. And what is good for our health like fruits and vegetables, we don’t like to eat. We like to drink pop but that again is no good for our health. Water and milk are good but not too many of us are fond of these drinks. Same goes with doing; walking and exercise is good for our health but we would rather take a car even if the place we are going to is only a 5 minutes walk.
I wonder why it happens: Why we end up inventing things that are injurious to our well-being? Is it because at the time of invention we don’t have the foresight or the ability to predict what long term effect of a particular invention will be? No, I think that even if we could predict that a particular invention will adversely affect our health in the long run, we will still invent it and use it anyways. The inventor would justify his/her invention by saying that if he/she doesn’t invent it, somebody else would; moreover nobody is forcing anybody to use it.
So ultimately it’s up to us as individuals to develop the self-discipline to stay healthy by eating what we don’t want such as fruits and vegetables and do things that we don’t want such as walking and exercise.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
~~ George Bernard Shaw ~~ (1856-1950)
I don’t agree with this quote. It’s not just the people who lack money that engage in unlawful, stupid or evil activities; many rich people indulge themselves in unlawful, stupid or evil activities and some of them end up in jail.
Obviously, for the rich, it’s not the lack of money rather it’s their insatiable greed that leads them to engage in such activities. While a certain amount of greed may be necessary and even desirable for progress, unbridled greed is definitely a curse.
Also, there are people who neither lack money nor are rich but still engage in evil activities. Examples of such people would be rapists, pedophiles, mass-murderers etc., many of whom have been known to belong to the middle class. Why do these middle class people indulge in such evil activities? No body has a definitive answer.
So the causes of evil are complex and not simple like just the lack of money; people from all segments of society have been known to indulge in evil activities.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
~~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~~ (1882 - 1945)
That is exactly true. An educated public willing to engage itself with the issues of the day and not leave it just to the elitists or politicians will ensure a successful democracy.
In a democracy people are, in fact, the employer. They elect their representatives to run the affairs of the state for a certain period of time after which they get to decide if they want to elect the same or different representative(s). It’s akin to an employer conducting a review of the employee after a certain period of time.
Therefore, an educated and well informed public where vast majority of people never commit themselves to just one political party but objectively assess the performance of the contenders just like an employer and then vote accordingly, will ensure a real successful democracy.
Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
~~ Agatha Christie ~~ (1890 - 1976)
It is so true. It’s funny how we seem to think that we know ourselves well, yet we are almost never aware of many little habits that we have until somebody points them out to us. And while we are blissfully unaware of most of these little habits of ours, these little habits may be driving other people around us up the wall. Further, we usually tend to resent those who gather the guts to tell us about our irritating habits.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
~~ Confucius ~~ (551 BC - 479 BC)
The quote is true but not very practical. Choosing a job you love is easier said than done. The reality of life is that most of us do not get to choose the job we love; the practicality of paying one’s bills starts hitting home pretty quick. Even if you find a job, which at the hiring stage you thought will be ideal for you, may, in reality, turn out to be quite different than you thought it would be. Once you get a job, the tendency is to stick with it even though you may not like it.
If you are one of those brave souls and quit 4 or 5 jobs after working for short periods of time because you didn’t love them and put these in your resume; you’ll probably not get any job let alone the job you love. That’s because most employers will look at your resume and won’t even call you for an interview as they think of you as a “quitter”.
So the idea of getting a job that you love is mostly a pipe dream; it very rarely happens in real life. I think most of the studies peg the percentage of people who love their jobs at around 1% to 2%. As a matter of fact, in a recent survey conducted by Ipsos Reid for the Royal Bank of Canada, 30% of Canadians said they are stuck in dead-end jobs. That is almost 1 in 3 Canadians! And Canada is one of the best countries to live in. If so many people in Canada can’t find a job they love, one can safely assume the situation in the rest of the world is far worse than in Canada.
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
~~ Abraham Lincoln ~~ (1809 - 1865)
This quote has proven itself to be very true over the ages. You can fool all the people for some of the time especially if you are in a position of trust or power because basically people tend to believe you or, in some cases, people may not have a choice but to believe you.
If you mis-use that position of trust or power to fool people then after some time the facts will start to appear that will unmask you and you’ll lose confidence and respect of most of the people. And once the people lose confidence in you, they won’t believe you after that even when you may be stating true facts; it’s like the shepherd boy who cried wolf too many times.
Unfortunately, the fooling of the people is not limited to just individuals in positions of power and trust, it can be a corporation or a whole industry. A good example of an industry that kept fooling the people for decades is the tobacco industry which kept insisting, in spite of the facts to contrary, that cigarette smoking causes no ill health effects!
So, yes, you can fool all the people for some of the time but you will eventually be unmasked.
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
~~ Winston Churchill ~~ (1874-1965)
This quote is funny but quite sensible and motivational. If you are or you think you are going through hell then it makes sense to keep going. Because if you stop then you are destined to stay in hell but if you keep going you might get out of it.
On a more higher level, this quote is really to motivate us not to stop making efforts to improve our situation, no matter how hopeless the situation might seem. As a matter of fact, if you don’t give up and keep making efforts to improve the situation, you can be almost certain that the situation will improve.
The real secret of success is enthusiasm.
~~ Walter Chrysler ~~ (1875 - 1940)
In my view, this quote is only partially true. First of all, I don’t think there is such a thing as ’secret’ to success. Enthusiasm is definitely a required trait to succeed at anything but enthusiasm alone won’t cut it. To succeed, one definitely needs to set a goal or at the minimum a general direction, a plan to attain that goal and work enthusiastically towards it.
While working towards that goal, one needs to continually check and analyze if one is making any progress towards that goal or not. If not then why not; what problems or hurdles are blocking the progress towards success and find ways, means and solutions to resolve those problems and or hurdles.
Of course if you are enthusiastic about your goal, you’ll spend time and energy to find solutions and try to succeed. And if you are not enthusiastic about your goal, you’ll abandon the goal as soon as you start facing problems. That’s what happens to most of us anyways; we quickly give up! :-)
The distance between you and your dreams is often the length of a single idea.
~~ Vic Conant ~~
Remember how Google founders made a fortune from just one idea? And it wasn’t even an original idea. There were lots of search engine players before them like InfoSeek, AltaVista, Yahoo and a number of others some of which don’t even exist any more. But Google florished because they kept exploring ideas to make their product better than anybody else and they still continue to come up with new ideas.
What does that say? In my view it says that to realize your dreams you need to think and explore ideas. Ideas as to what you need to do to realize your dreams, how to do what you need to do in a better and more efficient way than others. Not every idea is going to pan out. But you will never know unless you try. Even if an idea doesn’t work out, we learn valuable lessons as to why it didn’t work and how to avoid such pitfalls in future endeavours. And if one of your ideas pans out that may very well be the realization of your dreams.
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
~~ Robert Collier ~~ (1885-1950)
This is so true. To achieve success in any venture one need to make a start and then repeatedly keep making efforts in that direction; no matter how small the effort may be.
This quote very much ties in with the Confucius quote A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. You got to start with a single step and then keep taking steps in that direction to reach the destination.
The reason why most of us fail to achieve great success is that whenever we start any venture, we keep at it for a little while and then give up because:
- We faced a problem, setback or failure
- We just lost interest or
- We became just plain lazy
It’s important to remember that most successful people initially fail at least once or twice before becoming successful. Did you know that Henry Ford failed twice in his ventures before becoming a success?
So, success is indeed the sum of small efforts, not giving up, learn from past mistakes and keep on going in the chosen direction.
This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.
~~ Thomas Carlyle ~~ (1795 – 1881)
That is definitely true. With our science and technology, we have figured out that there are lots of suns (stars), lots of planets, and lots of asteroids roaming around in space, there are galaxies millions and millions miles away. Yet there may be lots of other things which we probably haven’t even imagined may exist. Even on our own planet earth, there are still a lot of things like other species that we know nothing about.
I often wonder why the world or universe exists and where does the universe end? With all our advanced science, we have no answer for these questions. Most likely we will never know the answers to these questions. May be universe has no end; it’s endless. Now think about it: If the universe is endless then it follows that there are countless suns (stars), planets, moons and probably countless other heavenly bodies which, with our present knowledge, we don’t know and can’t fathom.
And if the universe is endless and filled with countless suns and planets, it will be logical to think that some form of intelligent life will exist somewhere; it may be not exactly the life as we know it but something for sure. So the magical miracle continues. What do you think?
I claim to be no more than an average man with less than average abilities. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
~~ Mahatma Gandhi ~~ (1869 - 1948)
I think Mahatma Gandhi is being modest when he says he is no more than an average man. However, his advice is a good one. An avearge person can achieve a lot provided he or she is committed to the goal, continues to make efforts in that direction and doesn’t quit when the going gets tough.
Gandhi himself was physical beaten and imprisoned many times by the British authorities but he never wavered from his principle of non-violence, continued to persistently devote his energy to realize his dream and ultimately achieved his goal of freeing India.
Einstein said of Mahatma Gandhi:
“Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood.”
Sometimes, we just don’t know enough about what we are trying to achieve.
~~ Stuart Wilde ~~
Not just sometimes, I would say a lot of times we don’t know what are we trying to achieve. Many a times we just don’t know where are we going and why we want to go there? But to achieve anything we must define as precisely as posiible what it is that we want to achieve. Even if at the beginning we may not know the exact goal, we should still define it and make adjustments along the way.
Man was made at the end of the week’s work when God was tired.
~~ Mark Twain ~~ (1835 - 1910)
And here I have been mistakenly believing all my life that God never gets tired! :-) I am wondering what this world would have looked like if God had decided to make man when God was well rested. Probably then we would have abundance of qualities like:
- No lies
- No corruption
- No wars
- No murders
- No stealing
- Total Honesty
and many more such undesireable qualities. LOL.
That will be a terribly boring world with lots of unemployment as we won’t need police, no need for judges, lawyers, no need for politicians, soldiers not needed. And above all there will be no obscene profits because everybody will charge just a fair price! No, no, no, we don’t want a boring world like that! See, God knows best that’s why He dicided to make man at end of the week’s work! :-)
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
~~ William Shakespeare ~~ (1564 - 1616)
Ha Ha Ha, so Shakespeare noticed some facts a few centuries ago. Unfortunately, the devils liked the planet Earth so much that they decided to stay here for good. So the hell is still empty and all the devils are roaming around right here!
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.
~~ Oscar Wilde ~~ (1854 - 1900)
I do not agree with this quote. Disobedience and rebellion don’t always lead to progress though many times they do. While the consequences of disobedience may be minor to severe, the consequences of rebellion can be deadly particularly if the rebellion is against an autocratic ruler.
If you are an employee, I wouldn’t advise you to disobey the legitimate orders of your employer unless you are willing to lose your job. There usually are other avenues available to address your grievances instead of outright disobedience.
Does that mean one should never disobey or rebel? No, absolutely not. One should disobey or rebel when one is convinced about one’s cause and no other means work. But one should also be prepared to face the consequences that may follow.
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they’re just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under the earth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.
~~ Peter Weiss ~~
Peter Weiss has hit the nail on its head with this quote. It’s not surprising that in any confrontation, poeple who have actually been in a war before usually advise against going to war but those who have never been in a war are usually very gung-ho about going to war; possibly because never having been in an actual war they have these dreams of glorious victories. But there is nothing glorious about war; it’s all ugly.
Have you ever wondered why many war veterans just refuse to talk about their experience in the war? Could it be that they have witnessed the ugliest side of humans and found it so ugly that they don’t even want to talk about it?
Sometimes the war may be the only option because, unfortunately, in this World, there have been, there are, and possibly there will be, people who will not listen to reason and will only understand the language of force. But we all will do well to remember that war is not glorious but very ugly and it should be the last, the very last resort.
God is on the side with the best artillery.
~~ Napoleon Bonaparte ~~ (1769 - 1821)
Exactly. God is never known to have sided with the ill-equipped or the weak. Smart God! :-)
If you can find something everyone agrees on, it’s wrong.
~~ Morris Udall ~~ (American Congressman, 1922 - 1998)
Morris shows his sense of humor with this great quote. Surprisingly, the quote is true more often than one would expect. It’s especially true in the stock market. If lots of so called stock analysts are recommending a particular stock as a buy, you can be almost ceratin that it will go down and sooner than you would imagine.
Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that, so it goes on flying anyway.
~~ Mary Kay Ash ~~ (1915 - 2001)
It is not known how the myth that aerodynamically bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly became popular, but there is a perfectly good scientific explanation as to how bumblebees fly. So this quote is not strictly factual. Nonetheless, I think it is still a good quote as it emphasizes that we should not limit ourselves by underestimating our capabilities. In other words, we should get out of our comfort zone and try things we think can’t be done. We are all capable of doing more than what we actually do.
Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past can be changed.
~~ Oprah Winfrey ~~
Excellent quote. Never heard of anything like that before. Though we all know that letting go of the past is not easy. Life requires us to make tough choices and we need to make the tough choice and realize that the past cannot be changed. But we can certainly learn from the past.
You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.
~~ Lydia M. Child ~~
This is a very true quote. Have ever noticed that when you are in the company of people who are energetic, have positive outlook on life and are cheerful, you feel that energy as well? Positive and cheerful people are not cheerful because they have no problems; instead they have chosen to be cheerful in spite of the problems. And keeping a positive and cheerful disposition not only helps those around us but it also helps us physically, mentally and emotionally.
Of course, keeping a positive and cheerful outlook requires that we consciously and continually make an effort to be so.
No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
~~ John Calvin Coolidge ~~
Not necessarily true though I hope it’s true in most of the cases. Lots of people get honored for next to nothing or even receiving while pretending to be giving. As a matter of fact, many honored people get disgraced or even get convicted for doing crooked or unsavoury things.
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
~~ Mark Twain ~~ (1835 - 1910)
There is a very good reason for that. If we think we don’t know something or not sure about something, we don’t insist on it but try to learn more about it. But when we think that we are sure of something, we insist on it being true and many a times it turns out that what we were sure of isn’t necessarily the way we thought it to be. And that may lead us to trouble. I believe the lesson here is to be open-minded about the views of others even on matters that we think we know for sure.
