“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?”
“it's amazing what you can get used to.”
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
1963, Remarks Prepared for Delivery at the Trade Mart in Dallas
Context: It is fitting that these two symbols of Dallas progress are united in the sponsorship of this meeting, for they represent the best qualities, I am told, of leadership and learning in this city — and leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. The advancement of learning depends on community leadership for financial and political support and the products of that learning, in turn, are essential to the leadership's hopes for continued progress and prosperity. It is not a coincidence that those communities possessing the best in research and graduate facilities — from MIT to Cal Tech — tend to attract the new and growing industries. […] This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level, it is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason, or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
No known citation to Thoreau's works. First found, uncredited, in the 1940s in the variant "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it", p. 711, Locomotive Engineers Journal, Volume 76, 1942. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N6GZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&dq=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1980&as_brr=0
Misattributed
“The business of business is business.”
Widely attributed to Milton Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed
“Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.”
Warren Bennis cited in: Cecil O. Kemp, Jr. (2000) Wisdom Honor & Hope: The Inner Path to True Greatness. p. 207
2000s
“If you can laugh together, you can work together.”
Christine Arpe Gang, Scripps Howard News Service (August 7, 1995) "Healing gift of humor isn't a laughing matter: Chuckling is linked to good times, good health", Houston Chronicle, p. 8.
Attributed
“There was content, but no container.”
Source: Think (1999), Chapter Four, The Self, p. 135
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 131
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Statement at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1776-07-04), quoted as an anecdote in The Works of Benjamin Franklin by Jared Sparks (1840). However, this had earlier been attributed to Richard Penn in Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (1811, p. 116 http://books.google.com/books?id=TwYFAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&vq=%22hang+together%22). In 1801, "If we don't hang together, by Heavens we shall hang separately" appears in the English play Life by Frederick Reynolds (Life, Frederick Reynolds, in a collection by Mrs Inchbald, 1811, Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=egsLAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA176 first published in 1801 http://www.lib.muohio.edu/multifacet/record/mu3ugb2568779), and the remark was later attributed to 'An American General' by Reynolds in his 1826 memoir p.358 http://books.google.com/books?id=_MQEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA358&dq=general's. A comparable pun on "hang alone … hang together" appears in Dryden's 1717 The Spanish Fryar Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PgoOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PT19. The pun also appears in an April 14, 1776 letter from Carter Braxton to Landon Carter, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, Vol.1 (1921) http://books.google.com/books?id=7TMSAAAAYAAJ, p.421, as "a true saying of a Wit — We must hang together or separately."
Attributed
“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”
"Harvard: The Future," http://books.google.com/books?id=X3k5AQAAIAAJ&q=%22No+member+of+a+crew+is+praised+for+the+rugged+individuality+of+his+rowing%22&pg=PA266#v=onepage The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936 http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/theatlantic/doc/203819851.html?FMT=CITE&FMTS=CITE&type=current&date=Sep+1936&author=Alfred+North+Whitehead&pub=The+Atlantic+(1932-1971)&edition=&startpage=260-270&desc=Harvard:+The+future
1930s
“Good management consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.”
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 71; the earliest published occurrence of such remarks yet located were those of Jim Low in "The Human in Public Relations" a diner address in Proceedings, Seventh Annual Meeting of the Agricultural Research Institute, October 13-14, 1958, Washington, Pt. 3, p. 83
Disputed
As quoted in Edison & Ford Quote Book (2003) edited by Edison & Ford Winter Estates.
Date unknown
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
As quoted in An Enemy Called Average (1990) by John L. Mason, p. 55.
Date unknown
“No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.”
Widely misattributed to Emerson on the Internet, this quote is actually taken from Alfred North Whitehead's essay "Harvard: The Future" (The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936.)
Misattributed
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
The earliest citation yet found does not attribute this to Roosevelt, but presents it as a piece of anonymous piece folk-wisdom: "When one reaches the end of his rope, he should tie a knot in it and hang on" ( LIFE magazine (3 April 1919), p. 585 http://hdl.handle.net/2027/wu.89063018576?urlappend=%3Bseq=65).
Misattributed
Variant: When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
“People have been known to achieve more as a result of working with others than against them.”
“Let us all be the leaders we wish we had.”
Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
Source: kniha Michelle Obama - Becoming
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
“He who wishes to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.”
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
As quoted in Coaching Champions: The Privilege of Mentoring (1994) by Jess Gibson, p. 160
“There is value in NOT doing a thing.”
Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Twitter
