"First you jump off the cliff,
and you build your wings on the way down."
—Ray Bradbury

"I will cross that bridge when I get to it."

"A chain is only as strong as its weakest link."

"Don’t do to others what you
don’t like others doing to you."

"Grain by grain a loaf;
stone by stone a castle."
—Yugoslavian Proverb

"You can get everything in life you want
if you help enough other people
get what they want."
—Zig Ziglar

"We will either find a way or make one."
—Hannibal

"When facing a difficult task,
act as though it is impossible to fail.
If you’re going after Moby Dick,
take along the tartar sauce."
—H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

ABILITY
"You are the only one who can use your talents and abilities; it is an awesome responsibility." —Zig Ziglar

ACTION
"Action is the antidote to despair." —Joan Baez

"Knowledge is not power until it is combined with action."

"Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action." —Orison Swett Marden

"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action".—James Russell Lowell

ADVENTURE
"Life is a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." —Helen Keller

"If we didn’t live adventurously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I’ve no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged."—Virginia Woolf

AMBITION
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."—Mark Twain

"A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won’t be so hard in the end to lie down and rest."—Pearl Bailey

ATTITUDE
"The only liability in life is a bad attitude."—Scott Hamilton

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."—William James

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." —Viktor Frankl

BALANCE
"One of the most important word in the English language is BALANCE. If you have balance, you have everything." —Dr. Robert Anthony

BE YOURSELF
"To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." —e. e. Cummings

"Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself." —Hermann Hesse

BEST
"Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." —Oprah Winfrey

CARPE DIEM
"If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day." —Thomas Dreier

CHALLENGES
"Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make you stretch and go beyond the norm." —Cicely Tyson

"Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory." —General George S. Patton

CIRCUMSTANCES
"The greater part of happiness depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances." —Martha Washington

"Just because you come up by way of the rough side of the mountain doesn't mean you can' t reach the top." — Oprah Winfrey

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them."—George Bernard Shaw

COURAGE
"It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded." —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you." —Mary Tyler Moore

"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision." —Peter Drucker

DARE
"To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose one’s soul." —Soren Kierkegaard

DESIRE
"Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It' s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment." —Eric Butterworth

"Desire. It' s the ingredient that causes people to devote their lives to a dream and keep moving toward it, no matter how tough. It' s the intangible quality that has more impact on success than talent, education, or IQ. You can' t see desire, but you can feel its presence and see its results in the lives of successful people." —A.L. Williams Jr

DETERMINATION
"There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul." —Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"Some succeed because they are destined to,
but most succeed because they are determined to."

"Winners are ordinary people with extraordinary determination."

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance." —Samuel Johnson

DISCIPLINE
"Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced daily, while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the cumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to fortune or failure." —Jim Rohn

"No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, DISCIPLINED." —Harry Emerson Fosdick

DREAMS
"If you want to build a great enterprise, you have to have the courage to dream great dreams. If you dream small dreams, you may succeed in building something small. For many people, that is enough. But if you want to achieve widespread impact and lasting value be bold. Who wants a dream that's near-fetched?" —Howard Schultz

ENTHUSIASM
"Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things; first, an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice." —Arnold Toynbee

"Study the unusually successful people you know, and you will find them imbued with enthusiasm for their work which is contagious. Not only are they themselves excited about what they are doing, but they also get you excited." —Paul W. Ivey

"Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm." —Benjamin Disraeli

"Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence. It is no more or less than faith in action." —Henry Chester

"When enthusiasm is inspired by reason; controlled by caution; sound in theory; practical in application; reflects confidence; spreads good cheer; raises morale; inspires associates; arouses loyalty, and laughs at adversity, it is beyond price." —Coleman Cox

EXCELLENCE
"The quality of a person' s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." —Vice Lombardi

"The goal of a winner should be EXCELLENCE – not perfection."

EXPERIENCE
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward." —Vernon Law

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." —Aldous Huxley

FOCUS
"The main reason most people struggle professionally and personally is simply lack of focus."

"I never could have done without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time." —Charles Dickens

Golf great Ben Hogan stood over a crucial putt. Suddenly a loud train whistle blared in the distance. After sinking the putt, Hogan was asked if the train whistle bothered him. "What whistle?" Hogan replied.

GIVING UP
"When you get into a really tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never giver up then; for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." —Harriet Beecher Stowe

"No battle was ever won by surrendering."

HABITS
"The beginning of a HABIT is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, thought and act." —Orison Swett Marden

IMAGINATION
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." —Albert Einstein

"Imagination is the most powerful force on Earth." —Stephen King

"The arrested development of the imagination is, perhaps, the most common tragedy of our human existence." —H.A. Overstreet

LEARNING
"Learning is like rowing upstream, not to advance is to drop back." —Chinese proverb

"I’ve always grown from my challenges, from the things that didn’t work out. That’s when I’ve really learned." —Carol Burnett

"We are human and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds." —Novalis

LUCK
"Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work – and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t." —Lucille Ball

"When I was 15, I had LUCKY underwear. When that failed, I had a lucky hairdo, then a lucky race number, even lucky race days. After 15 years, I’ve found the secret to success is simple. It’s hard work." —Margaret Groos (marathon runner)

MODERATION
"Be moderate in everything, including moderation." —Horace Porter

"Moderation is not a virtue of thought; thought must not be moderate, but fearless, not to say shameless." —Leo Strauss

PASSION
"I never liked anyone who didn't have a temper. If you don't have a temper, you don't have any passion." —Michael Bloomberg

"Nothing great in the worlds has been accomplished without passion." —Hegel

"Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things." —Denis Diderot

PERSISTENCE
"Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."—Bill Eardley

"Money grows on the tree of persistence." —Japanese proverb

PROBLEMS
"Trouble is the common denominator of living, and it can be a blessing. Problems act like grindstones to smooth and polish us." —Ann Landers

"You will only be remembered for two things: the problems you solve or the ones you create." —Mike Murdoch, 101 Wisdom Keys

RESPONSIBILITY
"Responsibility is the thing people dread most of all. Yet it is the one thing in the world that develops us, gives us fibre." —Frank Crane

SAFE
"To play it safe is not to play." —Robert Altman

"A ship is safe in port… but that's not where a ship was meant to be."

STRESS
"Stress is the confusion created when one’s mind overrides the body’s basic desire to kick the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it."

TRUTH
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it and ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." —Winston Churchill

VICTORY
"The ultimate victory in competition is derived from the inner satisfaction of knowing that you have done your best and that you have gotten the most out of what you had to give." —Howard Cossell

WINNING
"Success is not so much achievement as achieving. Refuse to join the cautious crowd that plays not to lose; PLAY TO WIN." —David J. Mahoney

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ACHIEVEMENT
"Nobody ever accomplished anything by believing the nay-sayers. And few have done so by sticking to proven ideas in proven fields. It’s those who follow the road less traveled who create new industries, invent new products, build long-lasting enterprises, and inspire those around them to push their abilities to the highest levels of achievement. If you stop being the scrappy underdog, fighting against the odds, you risk the worst fate of all: mediocrity." —Howard Schultz

ATTITUDE
"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people say or do. It is more important than appearances, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it." —Charles Twindoll

CHOICE
"Jerry Long has been paralyzed from his neck down since a diving accident which rendered him a quadraplegic a few years ago. He was 17 when the accident happened. Today Long can use his mouth stick to type. He 'attends' two courses at Community College via a special telephone. The intercom allows Long to both hear and participate in class discussions. He also occupies his time by reading, watching television, surfing the net and writing. To a reporter who was enquiring about his life now, he answered, "I view my life as being abundant with meaning and purpose. The attitude that i chose on that fateful day has become my personal credo for life: I broke my neck, it didn't break me! I am currently enrolled in my first psychology course in college. I believe that my handicap will only enhance my ability to help others" —Viktor E. Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning

CONTENTMENT
Nine requisites for contented living by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Health enough to make work a pleasure.
• Wealth enough to support your needs.
• Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them.
• Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.
• Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.
• Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.
• Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful.
• Faith enough to make real the things of God.
• Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future

DREAMS
"Once you overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, other hurdles become less daunting. Most people can achieve beyond their dreams if they insist upon it. I'd encourage everyone to DREAM BIG, lay your foundations well, absorb information like a sponge, and not be afraid to defy conventional wisdom. Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean you shouldn't try. "—Howard Schultz

"Dreams are most important; if they weren't DuPont Registry, Robb Report, Home and Architectural Digest wouldn't have subscribers. People read these not because they' re buying today, but because they' re dreaming today. Anybody can accomplish their goals - to build a better family life, business, or relationship with god - but not everybody will do it. But to succeed you have to focus your dream. " —Dexter R. Yeager Sr

ENTERPRISE
The Entrepreneurial Spirit (adapted from "For Entrepreneurs Only" by Wilson Harrell)

   What special qualities do entrepreneurs have that allow them to do what everyone else knows can't be done, climb hills that can' t be climbed and move mountains that can' t be moved? The list is long, but surely it would include being a self-assured decision-maker, being dedicated, creative, courageous, single-purposed, aggressive, hard-working, confident and a positive thinker.
   Entrepreneurs are leaders. They are dreamers with an idea, full of excitement, exhilaration, optimism and hope.
   What is entrepreneurship all about? It is NOT about money, power or influence; these are nothing but measures of success. Being an entrepreneur IS about Freedom! Freedom to get your head above the crowd. Freedom to be your own person. Freedom to have an idea, and to turn that idea into a business, and that business into an empire, if you can. Freedom to seek excellence. Freedom to care about your product or service, your people, your associates, your customers. And, if it all works, freedom to tell bankers to go to Hell!
   To entrepreneurs, success means footprints in the sands of time.

GOAL
"Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can’t. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your GOAL. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin."

HAPPINESS
"It is the paradox of life that the way to miss happiness is to seek it first. The very first condition of lasting happiness is that a life should be full of purpose, aiming at something outside self. As a matter of experience, we find that true happiness comes in seeking other things, in the manifold activities of life, in the healthful outgoing of all human powers." —Hugo L. Black

"If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator, striving for it as the goal itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowdedd hours of each day." —Beran Wolfe

HOPE
"The people who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time." —Melvin J. Evans

"Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a person to do his or her utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of countenance, and makes a seeming impossibility give way."—Jeremy Collier

MONEY
(From Total Success by Dr. Robert Anthony)
   Many people think that if they could just get their hands on a large sum of money, they would be set for the rest of their lives. This is absolutely not true. Surveys have shown that people who receive large sums of money without working for them - lottery, inheritance - almost always find themselves back to their original financial level within two years of their windfall. They think that if they had money, they would pay their bills, get out of debt and start anew. But that very seldom happens. Over ninety percent of the people who win large sums of money eventually end up with no more money than they had before their winnings. Their standard of living does not increase and is in many cases lowered because of their excessive spending.
   The point here is that if you have a poverty consciousness or a consciousness of lack and limitation, you will literally spend yourself into poverty if you find yourself with too much money. You will spend whatever you have in order to get back to your 'comfort zone'.
   If we took all the money of the world, and divided it equally amongst every human being, in a short time the rich would be rich again and the poor would be poor.
   Take all the money away from a person who is a millionaire - one who has the consciousness of a millionaire - and within a short time he or she will be a millionaire again. RICHES START FROM THE MIND, not your pocketbook, bank account or investment. The pocketbook, bank account and investments are the effects, not the cause. The cause is always an idea or belief. A person is not rich because they have money. They have money because they are rich in consciousness. They believe that they are rich. Again, this is the reason that the rich will always get richer and the poor will always stay poor until they change their consciousness.

OPPORTUNITY
"I would like to amend the idea of being in the right place at the right time. There are many people who were in the right place at the right time but didn’t know it. You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can’t sit back and wait." —Ellen Metcalf

PERSEVERANCE
"Days after days after days in the studio…and it seems like days would go by where it’s just hard work and it just never seems to end, it’s just morning to evening. But all of a sudden, something will happen. And when it starts to flow, I don’t know exactly where it comes from, but it’s not from me, it’s from some greater source, but when it does start to flow, things will come to me that I just feel wanting to lead to another, to another, and that’s how I think the real good stuff comes. It’s when you don’t give up!" —Michael Flatley, in Riverdance; The Journey)

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CARPE DIEM
He slept beneath the moon,
He basked beneath the sun;
He lived a life of going-to-do soon,
And died with nothing done.
—James Albery

IF YOU THINK…
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.

If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost.
For out in the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow’s will–
It’s all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise,
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win the prize.

Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

WINNING...
The contest last for moments
though the training’s taken years.
It wasn’t the winning alone that
was worth the work and the tears.

The applause will be forgotten,
the prize will be misplaced
but the long hard hours of practice
will never be a waste.

For in trying to win you build a skill.
You learn that winning depends on will.
You never grow by how much you win,
you only grow by how much you put in.

So any new challenge you’ve just begun
put forth your best and you’ve already won.

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