Quotes about motivation and change (page 8)

“We must understand something very thoroughly. If society — if the state gives the rights, it can take them away — they're not inalienable. If the states give the rights, they can change them and manipulate them. But this was not the view of the founding fathers of this country.”

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) American theologian

A Christian Manifesto (1982)
Context: We must understand something very thoroughly. If society — if the state gives the rights, it can take them away — they're not inalienable. If the states give the rights, they can change them and manipulate them. But this was not the view of the founding fathers of this country. They believed, although not all of them were individual Christians, that there was a Creator and that this Creator gave the inalienable rights — this upon which our country was founded and which has given us the freedoms which we still have — even the freedoms which are being used now to destroy the freedoms.

“and here I felt a strange leaping of my heart-God did! My job was to simply follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to him in prayer.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

“Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way… God can give us the perfect way.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

“Perhaps only when human effort had done it's best and failed, would God's power alone be free to work.”

Corrie ten Boom book The Hiding Place

Source: The Hiding Place

“I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by Leonard Liebling in The Musical Courier, 1939; cited from Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) p. 351.

“Success doesn't change you; fame does.”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPItgCnamNg

“This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soulmate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: P.S. I Love You

“It matters if you don't just give up.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Attributed in Going Within (1990) http://books.google.com/books?id=buVs1VVUZakC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA303#v=onepage&q&f=false by Shirley MacLaine, p. 303
Attributed

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”

Nina Simone (1933–2003) American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist

Source: I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone

“News reports don't change the world. Only facts change it, and those have already happened when we get the news.”

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) Swiss author and dramatist

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

“When I am….. completely myself, entirely alone… or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

From a letter now regarded as a forgery by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz http://www.aproposmozart.com/Stafford%20--%20Mozart%20and%20genius.rev.ref.pdf, http://www.mozartforum.com/Lore/article.php?id=108, http://www.mozartforum.com/Lore/article.php?id=106
Misattributed
Context: When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.

“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom‎ (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416.
Misattributed

“You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Lyrics, Imagine (1971 album)

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest, Vols. 58–59, 1949, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=q2ofAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Life+is+simple%22+but+we+insist+on+making+it+complicated&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+is+simple%22+
Misattributed, Not Chinese