Business and work quotes
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“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States
As quoted in Business Etiquette for the Nineties : Your Ticket to Career Success (1992) by Lou Kennedy, p. 8
Variant: Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
“Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach
Variant: Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
“When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.”
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”
Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist
Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist
As quoted in The Best Liberal Quotes Ever : Why the Left is Right (2004) by William P. Martin, p. 173.
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.”
William Greenough Thayer Shedd (1820–1894) American theologian
Attributed without citation in Gary Ninneman, C.I.A.: Church in Atrophy (Xulon Press, 2006), p. 167. This is possibly a confusion with John Augustus Shedd.
“In life to handle yourself, use your head, but to handle others, use your heart.”
Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher
Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
1 September 1875, page 226
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris — we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
This has become attributed to both Walt Whitman and Helen Keller, but has not been found in either of their published works, and variations of the quote are listed as a proverb commonly used in both the US and Canada in A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Kelsie B. Harder and Stewart A. Kingsbury.
Misattributed
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
“One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947) American basketball player
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist
“Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.”
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
“Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Virtue is doing it.”
David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) American ichthyologist and educator
"Ideals of Stanford", by President David Starr Jordan, in The Land of Sunshine: A Southern California Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Los Angeles, June 1898), p. 11
Variant: "Wisdom is knowing what to do next; Skill is knowing how to do it, and Virtue is doing it."
