Quotes about attitude
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“Things on the essential list: vodka, Nine Inch Nails, a steady supply of mortal men, and an all-purpose bitchy attitude.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Men

“Reading is awesome and flexible and fits around chores and earning money and building the future and whatever else I’m doing that day. My attitude towards reading is entirely Epicurean—reading is pleasure and I pursue it purely because I like it.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

Money, Pleasure, Reading, Future

“However, there is something you should have. Something every Shadowhunter should have."
"An obnoxious, arrogant attitude?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Luke and Simon, pg. 71
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.”

John Dewey book Experience and Education

Source: Experience and Education

Learning

“Her last painting was of you, slouching against the front door: only your drowning I-had-a-lousy-Third-World-childhood-and-all-I-got-was-this-attitude eyes recognizable.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

World, Childhood, Painting

“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part… and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

Parting

“Knowledge is power, community is strength and positive attitude is everything”

Lance Armstrong (1971) professional cyclist from the USA

Communication, Knowledge

“God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessing into old attitudes.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, Idea

“Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by.”

Paulo Coelho book The Fifth Mountain

Source: The Fifth Mountain

Life, God

“It is only when the correct practice is followed for a long time, without interruptions and with a quality of positive attitude and eagerness, that it can succeed.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Source: Yoga-Sutras

Time

“Being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Have Space Suit—Will Travel

Source: Have Space Suit—Will Travel (1958), Chapter 9

Mother's Day, For Parents, For Mother

“Success in love isn't about looks, it's about attitude.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Love, Success

“Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Man alone, of all creatures of earth, can change his thought pattern and become the architect of his destiny." Actually said by Spencer W. Kimball, twelfth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in his Miracle of Forgiveness (1969), p. 114. This predates any of the misquotations.
Other forms: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind." This is also misattributed to Albert Schweitzer.
James did say: "As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness."
Misattributed
Context: Man alone, of all the creatures on earth, can change his own patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny. The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives … It is too bad that most people will not accept this tremendous discovery and begin living it.

Change, Attitude

“I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life, Flowers

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Change, Time, Future, Personality

“Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than what people do or say. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Money, People, Education, Appearance

“What's the point? was my attitude. We're all just going to die and then NOT be let on the boat.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

“If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviours and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Life

“When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)

Personality, Gratitude

“Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Life, Attitude

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Attitude

“Just what I needed—a necromancer with an attitude. Oh, wait, I was a necromancer with an attitude.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Obsidian Butterfly

Source: Obsidian Butterfly

Waiting

“Pardon all runners,
All speechless, alien winds,
All mad waters.

Pardon their impulses,
Their wild attitudes,
Their young flights, their reticence.

When a message has no clothes on
How can it be spoken.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Water, Madness, Clothes

“Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Relationship

“The key to friendship with God, he said, is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Friendship, Change

“So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." So somehow the "isness" of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals. The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.

Nature, Evil

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to
ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Question, Learning, Motivational, Success

“Is it hard?'
Not if you have the right attitudes. Its having the right attitudes thats hard.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values

“Don't let life's events determine your attitude, let your attitude determine your life..”

Jeff Davis

Life

“There is very little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

People, Attitude

“Oliver… well. Who knew if Oliver’s problem was the disease or just a bad attitude?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Carpe Corpus

Disease, Problem

“Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

Life, Music, Way

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Change, Motivational, Happy, Attitude

“It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something you can do it up to a point. If you really work at being happy you can do it up to a point. But anything more than that you can't. Anything more than that is luck.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Happiness, Question

“Your beliefs shape your attitudes!”

Andy Stanley (1958) American Christian minister

“None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran

World, Evil

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

Variant: Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.

Motivation, Attitude

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Motivation, Attitude

“My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men, Feeling

“We recruit for attitude and train for skill”

Atul Gawande (1965) American surgeon

Training

“We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

“Worship from the heart in times of adversity implies an attitude of humble acceptance on our part of God's right to do as He pleases in our lives.”

Jerry Bridges (1929–2016) American writer

Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

God, Time, Heart, Parting

“For a writer, only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

“When you wholeheartedly adopt a 'with all your heart' attitude and go all out with the positive principle,
you can do incredible things.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Source: My Favorite Quotations

Heart

“The passive ironic attitude is not cool or romantic, but pathetic and destructive.”

Robert Greene book Mastery

Source: Mastery

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

Fear, Failure, Hell, Cooking

“Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child, in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude,
All her majestic loveliness
Chastened and softened and subdued
Into a more attractive grace,
And with a human sense imbued.
He is the greatest artist, then,
Whether of pencil or of pen,
Who follows Nature.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Kéramos http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/lit/poetry/TheCompletePoeticalWorksofHenryWadsworthLongfellow/chap22.html, st. 29.

Art, Nature, Sense

“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Life, Change

“Beauty—real everlasting beauty—lives not on our faces, but in our attitude and our actions. It lives in what we do for ourselves and for others.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Beauty, Beauty

“When you're in a competitive environment, always give out the impression that you don't care. It makes people want you more. If you act desperate, it's over. I think a passive attitude is helpful. It comes naturally because I'm lazy.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

People, Nature, Thinking, Help

“He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude.
Yeah, those are the words.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Idea, Time

“If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Clothes

“Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”

Agatha Christie And Then There Were None

The ABC Murders (1936)
Source: And Then There Were None

Soul

“A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others. Be a carrier.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Waiting, Attitude

“You know," Elijah raised a hand to shake a finger at her, "you have an attitude problem."
"I certainly do. Your attitude is a huge problem for me.”

Jacquelyn Frank (1968) writer

Source: Elijah

Problem

“All human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

“WaiWai was an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives.”

Debito Arudou (1965) Author/activist with Japanese citizenship born in the USA

"Defending the weeklies, as well as Connell and his collaborators, is the unflagging media critic and campaigner for human rights Debito Arudou, who wrote that WaiWai was an essential guide to Japanese attitudes and editorial directives.") Justin Norrie, "Japan rails at Australian's tabloid trash" http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/japan-rails-at-australians-tabloid-trash/2008/07/04/1214951041660.html?page=2, Brisbane Times (2008-07-05

“The sublime is to approach the subject or wall with an attitude that is grand, noble, and in no way petty..”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote, 1922; from Bouillon 2006, p. 89; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [35] 1921 and later

Way

“I shrink it down by myself, actually. It's up to the schedule, so… If the artists or programmers say "no", then that's the answer. So it's kind of a mix. I always try to push a can-do attitude with them, you know?”

Hirokazu Yasuhara (1965) Japanese video game designer

Gamasutra interview (2008)

“That is why so many Sorelians, like many people on the Left both before and after the war, slid into fascism. When these leftists of all shapes and colors came to the conclusion that the working class had definitely beaten a retreat, they did not follow it into this attitude. Their socialism remained revolutionary when that of the proletariat had ceased to be so. Having to choose between the proletariat and revolution, they chose revolution; having to choose between a proletarian but moderate socialism and a nonproletarian but revolutionary and national socialism, they opted for the nonproletarian revolution, the national revolution.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p. 27

War, People, Color

“Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert

Star

“Nobody who has lived through the rise of the violent anti-Semitism which led to Hitler can refuse Mrs. Thatcher admiration for her courageous and outspoken warning. When I grew up in Vienna the established Jewish families were a generally respected group and all decent people would frown upon the occasional anti-Jewish outbursts of a few popular politicians. It was the sudden influx of large numbers of Galician and Polish Jews [during World War I] … which in a short period changed the attitude. They were too visibly different to be readily absorbed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times after Thatcher claimed that British people were afraid of being "swamped" by people of a different culture. (11 February 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

War, People, World, Family

“No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
1900s, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)

“The factors that are rarely instrumental in bringing about high job attitudes focus not on the job itself but rather on the characteristics of the context in which the job is done: working conditions, interpersonal relationships, supervision, company policies, administration of these policies, effects on the worker's personal life, job security, and salary. This is a basic distinction. The satisfiers relate to the actual job. Those factors that do not act as satisfiers describe the job situation.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 63

Life, Personality

“This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is kept alive by a constant respectful questioning—not by an excessive and snobbish attitude of respect. Therefore, rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering nineteenth-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students in the ideal University of Life would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, they would simply have learned it under a very different set of headings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity,” Liberal Education, vol. 95, no. 2 http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp09/le-sp09_MyView.cfm

Life, Marriage, Literature, Question

“The experiences of the war changed both Baruch’s and Wilson’s attitude toward the large firm. Following the war their anti-firm rhetoric was replaced with praise for the large firm’s patriotism and contribution to progress.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 112

War, Change

“What role would men and governments in new countries like the mass media to play?… The mass media can help to present Singapore's problems simply and clearly and then explain how if they support certain programmes and policies these problems can be solved. More important, we want the mass media to reinforce, not to undermine, the cultural values and social attitudes being inculcated in our schools and universities.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Address To The General Assembly Of The International Press Institute At Helsinki Wednesday, 9th June, 1971 http://journalism.sg/lee-kuan-yews-1971-speech-on-the-press/ 1970s

Men, School, Support, Problem

“Consider some of the qualities of typical modernistic poetry: very interesting language, a great emphasis on connotation, "texture"; extreme intensity, forced emotion — violence; a good deal of obscurity; emphasis on sensation, perceptual nuances; emphasis on details, on the part rather than on the whole; experimental or novel qualities of some sort; a tendency toward external formlessness and internal disorganization — these are justified, generally, as the disorganization required to express a disorganized age, or, alternatively, as newly discovered and more complex types of organization; an extremely personal style — refine your singularities; lack of restraint — all tendencies are forced to their limits; there is a good deal of emphasis on the unconscious, dream structure, the thoroughly subjective; the poet's attitudes are usually anti-scientific, anti-common-sense, anti-public — he is, essentially, removed; poetry is primarily lyric, intensive — the few long poems are aggregations of lyric details; poems usually have, not a logical, but the more or less associational style of dramatic monologue; and so on and so on. This complex of qualities is essentially romantic; and the poetry that exhibits it represents the culminating point of romanticism.”

Randall Jarrell book Five Young American Poets

"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Age, Dreams, Sense, Parting

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

War, Democracy, Confidence, Idea

““It’s a Texan’s attitude toward risk, reward and failure I’m talking about. It’s how they handle life. They live it big.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Life, Failure

“Father-dominated people who form father-dominated cultures have father-religions: a male deity, an authoritative scripture, a strong central government, an intolerance for inquiry and research, a repressive sexual attitude, a deep conservatism (for one does not change what Father built), a rigid demarcation, in dress and conduct, between the sexes, and a profound horror of homosexuality.
Mother-dominated people who form mother-dominated cultures have mother religions: a female deity served by priestesses, a liberal government—one which feeds the masses and succors the helpless—a great tolerance for experimental thought, a permissive attitude toward sex, a hazy boundary between the insignes of the sexes, and a dread of incest.”

Theodore Sturgeon book Venus Plus X

Section 43 (pp. 131-132)
Venus Plus X (1960)

People, Religion, Sex, Strong

“The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Watching Water

Patience

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Men, War, Secret, Communication

“It would be different if there were some great widespread public indigonation and demand: "Away with the prescriptive upper house of Parliament". There is not. There was recently carried out by Mr. McKenzie and a colleague of his a survey of working-class political attitudes called Angels in Marble. They found that "only one-third of the entire working class sample, and only a slightly higher proportion of Labour voters, favoured abolishing the Lords or altering it in any way…About a third of the whole sample" of working-class voters in the country "see the Lords as an intrinsic part of the national tradition or of the government of the country." As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people—the underlying value of that which is traditional, of that which is prescriptive.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1968/nov/19/house-of-lords-reform#S5CV0773P0_19681119_HOC_305 (19 November 1968) regarding proposals for reforming the House of Lords. 1960s

People, Truth, Angels, Way

“Stephan Arkadievich chose neither his attitudes nor his opinions, no, the attitudes and opinions came to him on their own, just as he chose neither the style of his hat nor of his coats but got what people were wearing.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Part 1, Chapter 3
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

People

“Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis : Meditations on Computer Systems Development (2002) by Patrick McDermott, p. xix

Way

“Try to see what attitudes rule your day, then ask what kind of a day you usually have.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

The Power of Esoterics

“My plays are not didactic… they simply express my attitude to my world.”

Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) Austrian dramatic, painter and writer

World

“We conceive the prominent element in present-day industrial management to be: the mental attitude that consciously applies the transference of skill to all the activities of industry. Here emphasis is placed upon the word all, for the restricted application of this principle to machines and tools has been highly developed for a long period. But its conscious application in a broad way to the production departments, and particularly to the workmen, we believe has been made during the last quarter of a century.”

Henry R. Towne (1844–1924) American engineer

Attributed to Henry R. Towne in: William Kent (1914) Investigating an Industry, p. 3-4
Comment: William Kent mentions the "The Engineer as an Economist," (1886) as the source.

Way

“Beyond all conscious lying and falsifying, there is a deeper “organic mendacity.” Here the falsification is not formed in consciousness, but at the same stage of the mental process as the impressions and value feelings themselves: on the road of experience into consciousness. There is “organic mendacity” whenever a man’s mind admits only those impressions which serve his “interest” or his instinctive attitude. Already in the process of mental reproduction and recollection, the contents of his experience are modified in this direction. He who is “mendacious” has no need to lie! In his case, the automatic process of forming recollections, impressions, and feelings is involuntarily slanted, so that conscious falsification becomes unnecessary.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 77-78

Lie, Feeling, Lying

“You must realize that living organisms will do anything to survive. Castaways at sea will drink their own urine in their need for water. Disgust at this is only the attitude of the overprotected who have never experienced extreme thirst or hunger.”

Harry Harrison book Planet of the Damned

Source: Planet of the Damned (1962), Chapter 8

Hunger, Drink, Water, Sea

“I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that system.”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley book Trent's Last Case

Source: Trent's Last Case (1912), Chapter XVI: "The Last Straw"

“What I consider completely sterile is the attitude, for instance, of Bertalanffy who is going around and jumping around for years saying that all the analytical science and molecular biology doesn’t really get to interesting results; let’s talk in terms of general systems theory … there cannot be anything such as general systems theory, it’s impossible. Or, if it existed, it would be meaningless.”

Jacques Monod (1910–1976) French biologist

Monod (1974) "On chance and necessity". In F. J. Ayala & T. Dobzhansky, (Eds.), Studies in the philosophy of biology. cited in: Brian R. Gaines (1979) " General systems research: quo vadis? http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~gaines/reports/SYS/GS79/GS79.pdf", General Systems, Vol. 24 (1979), p. 4

Science

“I felt it necessary to evolve entirely new concepts (of form and space and paintings) and postulate them in an instrument that could continue to shake itself free from dialectical perversions. The dominant ones, Cubism and Expressionism, only reflected the attitudes of power or spiritual debasement of the individual.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Clyfford Still, interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 200
1960s

Painting

“I like looking at the characters. Seeing them always brings up some voice or attitude. I am much more visual and that works so much better than having someone tell me what the character is all about”

Frank Welker (1946) American actor

Frank Welker Q&A http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/09/16/frank-welker-qa (September 15, 2009)

“Like everything else, James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) has had to change for the nineties. The venerable 007, coming off a long hiatus, has taken on his sixth face (the other five being Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton), changed his mode of transport from an Aston Martin to a BMW, and now answers to a female "M" (played dryly by Judi Dench). Bond's attitudes towards women have been modified — although not greatly. Also, there's more action in GoldenEye than in previous 007 entries — enough to keep a ninety-minute film moving at a frantic pace. Unfortunately, this movie isn't ninety-minutes long — it's one-hundred thirty, which means that fully one-quarter of GoldenEye is momentum-killing padding.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/g/goldeneye.html of GoldenEye (1995). Three star reviews

Women, Change

“I perfectly understand the particular attention which you pay to the question of nuclear energy, and fully realize the possible dangers and catastrophes which might result for mankind from an irresponsible attitude. In this field my wish is for Iran to put all her efforts towards the peaceful use of atomic energy. We shall continue to co-operate with all the nations of the world to attain this end in the interests of human society.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

Message to the White House, April 1977, as quoted in The Shah's Story, page 67-68
Speeches, 1977

World, Peace, Understanding, Question

“Punitive-repressive attitudes toward extramarital sex are also linked with physical violence, personal crime, and the practice of slavery.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

Sex, Personality

“Liberalism—it is well to recall this today—is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so anti-natural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Nature, Appearance, Cry

“The public wants miracles. The public demands miracles; and if one source ceases to provide them, they will turn to another source which seems to accomplish the spectacular. Even while they resented and opposed the scientific attitude, they lapped up the miracles which this attitude accomplished with glee.”

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), pp. 76-77.

“The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organise our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

On American attitudes to the Common Agricultural Policy (7 December 1990), quoted in Charles Grant, Delors - Inside the House that Jacques Built (London: Nicholas Brearley, 1994), p. 172.

World

“There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself; it revolved around words like 'tortured', 'struggle'. 'pain'… I could never see these qualities in paint – I could see them in life and art that illustrates life. But I could not see such conflicts in the materials and I knew that it had to be in the attitude of the painter.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 37

Life, Pain, Art, Painting

“Great Britain, will now have to determine its attitude toward the conflict, and it has the following possibilities: It can accept that the situation will never return to what it was before April 2, in which case we would maintain an attitude of negotiating for the recovery of our sovereignty. Or it can proceed toward the restoration of its colonial regime, with which there would be no security or definitive peace, and the responsibility of deepening the conflict would fall on Great Britain. In any case, the nation united, on its feet, motivated by the sentiment a united cause, will continue marching toward improving and strengthening itself.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

As quoted in "Galtieri bars peace if Britain restores its 'colonial rule'" http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/16/world/galtieri-bars-peace-if-britain-restores-its-colonial-rule.html, The New York Times (June 16, 1982)

Peace, Motivation

“Now that the once omnipotent Liberal party has so declined, it is hard to realise how formidable it was in 1911—especially in Scotland. Its dogmas were so completely taken for granted that their presentation partook less of argument than of a tribal incantation. Mr. Gladstone had given it an aura of earnest morality, so that its platforms were also pulpits and its harangues had the weight of sermons. Its members seemed to assume that their opponents must be lacking either in morals or mind. The Tories were the "stupid" party; Liberals alone understood and sympathised with the poor; a working man who was not a Liberal was inaccessible to reason, or morally corrupt, or intimidated by laird or employer. I remember a lady summing up the attitude thus: Tories may think they are better born, but Liberals know that they are born better.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Memory Hold-The-Door (1940)

Stupidity, Thinking

“Many people find it hard working with their boss and often leave their jobs because of their boss’ working style, behaviours and attitude. I once heard someone say, “I joined the company, but I left my boss.””

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

page 184 Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?id=p24GkAsgjGEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?id=qZjO9_ov74EC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id=4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nigel+cumberland&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=nigel%20cumberland&f=false

People

“Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Introduction, p. xxiv
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)

Business, Nature, Change, Parting

“My attitude was always to keep open, to keep scanning. I think that's how things work in nature. Many people are close-minded, rigid, and that's not my inclination.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

People, Nature, Thinking

“RockNet: Were you terribly uncomfortable at the recent Grammy Award Show?
Cornell: I don't know. It's just a strange subject. It's almost as if the music industry is patting itself on the back in a way. This was the seventh Grammy nomination for us and had we won one for our first nomination I would have had a really cool attitude about it because it would have meant that the people who were actually voting were paying attention to music for music's sake as opposed to some other reason.
I was happy that we were nominated because it was an independent record company and it was a low-profile record. We didn't win a Grammy until we'd sold several millions and it seems that what sells a lot is what wins, even though the record may or may not be any good, but that seems to be the requirement.
I'm not critical of the people who work in the music industry, and I appreciate the Grammy. (But) to me it's their party and it's not really mine. It's not for the musicians. It has more to do with the industry. You can tell after a Grammy period all the record labels and artists who won a bunch take out full-page ads in the trades gloating. That's fine. That's what they do, they sell records and they work really hard to develop careers. If they're into it, I'm not going to be disrespectful, but I'd hate for anyone to think that it's something that was a necessity for me or the rest of the band, or that it was a benchmark to us of legitimacy for us because it's not. It doesn't really matter that much to us. It seems like it's for someone else. I'd never get up and say that. If I was totally not into it, the best thing to do is to not show up.
Maybe ten years from now I'll reflect and say "wow, that happened and it was pretty unusual. Not every kid on the block gets to go up and pick up a Grammy Award."”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

It's just one more thing to take the focus away from what we like to do, which is to write music and make records and try not to think about anything whether it's how many records we sell or what people think of us. For us, I think the key to success for being a band and always making good records is always going to be forgetting about everything else outside our own little band. RockNet Interview: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, May 1, 1996 https://web.archive.org/web/19961114054327/http://www.rocknet.com/may96/soundgar.html, Soundgarden Era

Hate, Happiness, People, Music

“When I met Wittgenstein, I saw that Schlick's warnings were fully justified. But his behavior was not caused by any arrogance. In general, he was of a sympathetic temperament and very kind; but he was hypersensitive and easily irritated. Whatever he said was always interesting and stimulating and the way in which he expressed it was often fascinating. His point of view and his attitude toward people and problems, even theoretical problems, were much more similar to those of a creative artist than to those of a scientist; one might almost say, similar to those of a religious prophet or a seer. When he started to formulate his view on some specific problem, we often felt the internal struggle that occurred in him at that very moment, a struggle by which he tried to penetrate from darkness to light under an intense and painful strain, which was even visible on his most expressive face. When finally, sometimes after a prolonged arduous effort, his answers came forth, his statement stood before us like a newly created piece of art or a divine revelation. Not that he asserted his views dogmatically … But the impression he made on us was as if insight came to him as through divine inspiration, so that we could not help feeling that any sober rational comment of analysis of it would be a profanation.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Rudolf Carnap, as quoted in The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (1963) by Paul Arthur Schilpp, p. 25, and in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1991) by Ray Monk, p. 244

Pain, People, Art, Way

“Socialization consists of those patterns of action or aspects of action which inculcate in individuals the skills (including knowledge), motives, and attitudes necessary for the performance of present and anticipated roles.”

David Aberle (1918–2004) anthropologist

David Aberle (1961: 387), quoted in: William E. Willmott (1972) Economic Organization in Chinese Society,

Motivation, Knowledge

Quotes about attitude page 3

Quotes about attitude
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