Inspiring Quotes - Sayings that Inspire

If not now, then when? If not me, then who?  Inspiration 101



If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. (John Quincy Adams)

A person's greatest strength develops at the point when they overcome their greatest weakness. (Elmer G. Letterman)

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value. (Albert Einstein)

"A life without cause is a life without effect" 

Don't count the days, make the days count. (Muhammad Ali)

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. (Latin Proverb Phrases - Destitutus ventis, remos adhibe)

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

When you feel like quitting, just remember why you started.

Man has responsibility, not power.  (Tuscarora)

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. (Francis Bacon)

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. J.R.R. Tolkien

If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. (Yogi Berra)

The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize. (Richard Monckton Milnes)

Your life is your message to the world. Make it inspiring. (Lorrin L. Lee)

When you set yourself free you inspire others to be free.

Where there's a will there's a way. (English Proverb)

Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. (Francis of Assisi)

I choose to live by choice, not by chance. To make changes, not excuses. To be motivated, not manipulated. To be useful, not used. To excel, not compete. I choose self-esteem, not self pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, not the random opinions of others.

Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world. Archimedes

"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence? (George Carlin)

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man. (George Washington)

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to. (W. C. Fields)

It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.  (Mother Teresa)

It’s not so much how moved you are in your life but how much you move others in theirs.

"Before you act, listen. Before you react, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try." (Ernest Hemingway)

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. (Og Mandino)

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  (Reinhold Niebuhr)

"Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moments that take your breath away."

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  (Joan Collins)

The best way to predict the future is to create it.  (Peter F. Drucker)

Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. (Erica Jong)

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love. (Francois de Fenelon)

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other peoples' models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.  (Shakti Gawain)

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. (Dr. Seuss)

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. (Ray Bradbury)

Running from your problems is not "moving forward." (Bill Purdin)

Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else. (Judy Garland)

Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices. (Benjamin Franklin)

Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be. (Fanny Brice)

Take pride in how far you have come, have faith in how far you can go.

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh - at yourself. (Ethel Barrymore)

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. (Anais Nin)

He that respects himself is safe from others; He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.

Not everything in life will come to you. There are something's in life that you have to go after and make it happen. You have to travel and move towards what you seek. You just can't wait for it, sometimes you just have to go for it.

Statue of Unity is a colossal statue of Indian statesman and independence activist Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950), who was the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home minister of independent India and the chief adherent of Mahatma Gandhi during the non-violent Indian Independence movement. Patel was highly respected for his leadership in uniting 562 princely states of India with a major part of the former British Raj to form the single Union of India. The statue is located in the state of Gujarat, India. It is the world's tallest statue with a height of (597 ft) 182 metres. It is located on a river facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the river Narmada in the Kevadiya colony, 100 kilometres (62 mi) southeast of the city of Vadodara and 150 kilometres (93 mi) from Surat.

Totem Pole is a monumental carving made from large trees, mostly western red cedar. A Totem pole is a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures by First Nations and indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia. A Totem pole symbolizes or commemorates ancestors, cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. The poles may also serve as functional architectural features, welcome signs for village visitors, mortuary vessels for the remains of deceased ancestors, or as a means to publicly ridicule someone. They may embody a historical narrative of significance to the people carving and installing the pole. Given the complexity and symbolic meanings of these various carvings, their placement and importance lies in the observer's knowledge and connection to the meanings of the figures and the culture in which they are embedded.

Monument is a type of structure that was explicitly created to commemorate a person or event, or which has become relevant to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, due to its perceived artistic, historical, political, technical or architectural importance. Some of the first monuments were dolmens or menhirs, megalithic constructions built for religious or funerary purposes. Examples of monuments include statues, war memorials, historical buildings, archaeological sites, and cultural assets. If there is a public interest in its preservation, a monument can for example be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

You don't learn about history from monuments or statues, you learn from investigation. Ken Burns: Our Monuments are Representations of Myth, not Fact | Opinion (youtube).

An act of Liberation from Racism. Pulling down statues is a tradition that dates back to U.S. independence. In 1776 following a reading of the freshly written Declaration of Independence, a group of New Yorkers descended on Bowling Green in lower Manhattan and physically pulled down a statue of King George III. The statue of King George III was dedicated on April 26th, 1770 at Bowling Green in New York City. A Philadelphia paper reporting on the incident said that the leaden statue would be melted down to create bullets for the coming war—42,088 bullets, to be exact. The statue was pulled down for two reasons: it was a symbolic act of dissolving all connection with tyrannical rule, and it was made of two tons of lead.

Ukraine has reportedly removed all 1,320 statues of Lenin in an effort to distance themselves from Soviet-era symbols and forge a new path for the country

Damnatio Memoriae is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. There are and have been many routes to damnatio, including the destruction of depictions, the removal of names from inscriptions and documents, and even large-scale rewritings of history. The term can be applied to other instances of official scrubbing; the practice is seen as long ago as the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut in the fourteenth century BC.

Transcendence is the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits. A state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience.

Possibility: A future prospect or potential. Capability of existing or happening or being true. A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena. A possible alternative

"If you do not go after what you want, you’ll never have it." "If you do not ask, the answer will most likely be no." "If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place.”

Opportunity knocks only once, but are you sure that it was opportunity knocking, it could have been a bad idea that was knocking on your door, so it might be better not to answer that knock, unless you're positively sure who's knocking on your door. When someone says "Opportunity knocks only once", you must say, "Prove that it is an opportunity, and I will answer the door". Just because you're knocking, doesn't mean someone is going to answer. Identify yourself, and don't pretend to be something that you're not.

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants - Make Your Baton Count

"A hundred times a day I remind myself that my life depends on the labors of other people, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give, in the measure I have received, and I am still receiving." - Albert Einstein.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." (Isaac Newton)

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants means that everything that you have today has been built upon previous discoveries. Giants symbolize all the great inventors and activists throughout history who shared their knowledge and worked for the benefit of mankind. Without these giants there would be no shoulders to stand on, thus we would have no advancements and we would still be Neanderthals, if even that. Remember that you were born altricial, and that you may still be dependent, so be grateful and don't just feel privileged.

Making a Difference - Success - Appreciation - Everything is a Remix

All inventions are born from other peoples inventions. People piggyback off other peoples ideas, and some reap the rewards at other peoples expense. I can influence a person to create something different and then that person can influence me back with how they used my influence to create something different. People influence each other like a feedback loop of creativity.

No one finishes this race because this race has no finish line, but everyone gets to pass a baton, and a good hand off means that you will not slow anyone down during the hand off, especially anyone of the billions who will live after you. Everyone today is an accumulation of the 106 Billion batons that have been passed forward for thousands of years. So make your baton count. Where are we going? Into the future…pass the baton, life goes on….

Passing the Torch is a metaphor for transferring one's knowledge and responsibilities to another person, and to bestow or grant one's role and position to another person who will carry on a tradition or practice. This metaphoric expression alludes to the ancient Greek torch race, in which a lighted torch was passed from one runner to the next. (Don't let the fire burn out or let the flame die out, keep the fire burning). Relay Race (cycles of life).

Passing on Information (DNA through time) - Flowing through our veins in our DNA is a piece of almost every human being that has ever lived. Everyone should honor these gifts that we have inherited.

"Every person who has ever lived is a part of you. You are nothing without everyone."

Everything that you have is from people who did not take it to the grave. People were nice enough before they died to leave behind what they have learned in their life and what they learned from people who lived before them. When a cell divides, it shares everything the cell learned in their life and shares everything given to them from all previous cells who lived before them. Don't take it to the grave, unless it's hate and ignorance, then by all means, take that sh*t to your grave, because we don't need it. Most of us have benefited from the efforts and ideas of millions of other people over the last two thousand years. So to return the favor for their work and sacrifices, I will examine all the tools, knowledge and technologies that have been created and choose the most valuable, the most effective and the most sustainable tools that we have, and then take this knowledge to the next level. Acknowledgment (citation).

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent." (John Donne)

"No man is wise enough by himself." Working Together.

"None of us is as smart as all of us." (Ken Blanchard)

“There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.” - Elie Wiesel.

Feed Off is to gain strength, energy, or support from others. To be nourished, sustained, or fueled by something. We feed off each other's ideas.

Every freedom, right and privilege that you have is from people who protested and fought for freedoms, rights and privileges. And every freedom, right and privilege that future generations will have is from you, but only if you fight to preserve it.

Every single thing that people have comes from our environment. Our knowledge and our language comes from all the previous generations of millions of people who learned about our environment and then preserved our knowledge and also helped to disseminate our knowledge. So every single thing that you have comes from the environment, even the knowledge and information, which means that every living thing comes from the environment, even you. But sadly, most people can not comprehend this fact.

My advice to you is to please remember that when learning about yourself and the world around you, there are no easy answers and there's no short cuts. Here's what we have learned so far, and here's all the things that we still don't know. So there's a lot more to learn, and your parents don't know everything. Every person on this planet is part of this journey. And one of the things that we did learn so far is that the more you know and understand the better your life will be. The road of knowledge has no exit, you may pull over and take a break anytime you want, but you will never see an exit. So everyone must stay on this road of knowledge for as long as we can. We are playing a game of tag with life and death, and now you're it, run baby, run.
Keep Learning my Friends.

We inherited an incredible fortune, but no one educated us about the responsibilities.

I didn't make the clothes I wear, I didn't make the soap I use to clean myself, I didn't make the toilet I poop in, I didn't make the dishes or utensils I use to feed myself, I didn't grow the food I eat, I didn't make the house I live in, I didn't make the windows, I didn't make the tools that built my house, I didn't make the furniture, I didn't make the wires that bring me the energy I use, I didn't make the electrical energy that powers my refrigerator, I didn't make the pipes that bring me the water that I need, I didn't make the electronics I use, I didn't make the car I drive, I didn't make the paper I write on, I didn't make the computer I use to educate myself, I didn't make the computer software that makes my computer do all kinds of amazing things, I never created a new word that was good enough to be added to a dictionary, I didn't create the English language that I need to communicate with others and myself, I didn't create the math that I use to measure and predict, I didn't create the science that helps me understand my world better. So there's no doubt that we need each other. And there's no doubt in knowing that there is not one person who can do it alone. All these advancements has made Human life more comfortable and has given people more time to explore their world and themselves. We should not let all this hard work go to waste, So now it's time that we use all these technological benefits to our advantage. So you were wondering, how do I contribute to the human betterment like others have before me? How do I use the time that other people have saved me? First educate yourself, learn about cause and effect, learn problem solving, learn how to analyze information. Then make the most logical choices that would produce the most positive results and produce the least negative effects. Then Communicate this information and knowledge to others. There's a great benefit to a species that can multiply and reproduce. It seems to be a prerequisite for life, especially if life is to survive and be sustainable. So there's no doubt that we need each other. But just multiplying and reproducing will not sustain human life or make us stronger. So this is where the human brain can save us. Our choices and our ability to communicate are our biggest strengths, It's time that we put our heads together.

Working Together - Collaboration - Self Managing

I can hardly take any of the credit for what I have been able to accomplish in my life because millions of people have contributed to my accomplishments, all I did was listen and learn. Listening and learning seemed natural and it felt like something that I was supposed to be doing? And I also thought that everyone else was doing the same thing, listening and learning. But I was wrong. Everyone doesn't have access to the same information and knowledge, so we are not able to learn the same things or process information and knowledge in the same way.

Information Literacy - Learning Methods

Live, Learn, Love and Progress - Doing

Shared Universe is a set of creative works where more than one writer (or other artist) independently contributes a work that can stand alone but fits into the joint development of the storyline, characters, or world of the overall project. It is common in genres like science fiction. It differs from collaborative writing where multiple artists are working together on the same work and from crossovers where the works and characters are independent except for a single meeting.

A lot of people have contributed to the comforts in your life. You have a responsibility towards them, to make the best of what has been giving to you by the efforts of others. Millions have died for the comforts that I have received, so please make good use of these gifts, and don't waste the extra energy and potential that people have given you. If your going to stand on the shoulders of giants, you better stand, don't sit and don't fall off. Everyone alive today is benefiting from millions of ideas coming together to form a quality of life that millions of people enjoy. And sadly not everyone benefits from these sacrifices and work, and most people don't realize this fact, thus too many don't respect the gift that they have been given, which is enormous potential, more then any other time in human history. Every parent on earth wants their child to have a better life then they did. It's heart breaking to see children not care about the sacrifices of millions of people, and not just their parents, which is the failure of education, because this is knowledge that we can easily teach.

No one is Self Made. To say that someone is self made millionaire is just a lie. No one did anything all on their own. Not even isolated tribes in the jungles are self made. Everyone human when born needs other humans to survive. Then you need other people to teach you language and other skills. By the time you even make an independent move all on your own, you did it because you have been given the potential from other people. No one is a Self Made Millionaire because everyone depends on other people and needs helps from other people and everyone benefits from other peoples work. self made millionaires do not exist. Why Copyright Laws need to be more accurately applied.

No one can take full credit for anything they do, and no one can take full blame for what they do.

I'm doing what every normal person should be doing, documenting and sharing knowledge with as many people as possible. After all, every benefit and every luxury in your life came to you from other people who shared their knowledge. So it makes sense that I continue to provide this service to humanity, so that billions of people in the future will benefit as I have benefited from the billions who lived before me.

Almost every person alive today is living off the sacrifices and hard work of billions of people. If you don't feel that you have an obligation to honor those sacrifices that you are benefiting from, then you are most likely dead on the inside and not even remotely connected to life in any meaningful way. Almost every person alive today has been given a once in a life time opportunity. If you blow this opportunity, you will be responsible for the death of billions of people. But you don't fully understand this dilemma just yet, so you need to. And don't forget, everything you have in life is from millions of people taking those steps to improve life over thousands of years, with many never fulfilling their dream. But because humans can reproduce, there will always be someone to pickup where you liftoff. So you need to pick up that baton and keep going because billions of future generations are counting on you to keep that dream alive.

I am not just here based on the decisions that I have made in my life prior to this moment, I am also here because of the decisions that other people made. You can say that you have reached a goal or reached a milestone, and you can say that these are the things that you did to accomplish your goals, but what you can't say or even be aware of, is all the other things that helped you accomplish your goals. A combination of things happened. And just one or two changes in any of those things that happened, would have created a different outcome. We can measure the things that were the most important and had the biggest impact, but what we can't measure everything else that went into the things that we measured as being factors of our success. You think that your are doing something alone or doing work on your own, but you're not, which is one of the reasons why people believe in a God, because life needs more than just dumb luck, and we need more than just experience and knowledge. We need someone to say that our lives meant something and that this was not all for nothing, and there are reasons why things happened the way they did. I'm not nothing, I'm something. But just what that something is, is the never ending desire to know what this is. As we put the pieces of the puzzle together, we realize that we don't have all the pieces to the puzzle, which means that we are either have to keep searching for the missing pieces, or we must create those missing pieces ourselves, for we are the missing pieces to the puzzle, and we are not done yet shaping our edges to fit into the grand scheme of things.

Did you ever ask yourself how much did your life cost the world? How many people did it take to provide you with all those products and services that you had the privilege of using? How much time did people have to spend providing you with all those products and services? And how many resources from the earth were used in providing you with all those products and services? What was the cost to the environment for using all those products and services? And with all that work, time, people and resources, how many people died serving you and providing for you? And What did you give in return? Were you a good investment or a poor investment? Don't worry that you don't know the answers to any of these questions, because most people don't. What's hard to understand is why don't people know the cost and the effects of their life? It's like we're asleep, or in some kind of self induced coma, unknowingly and unaware. Could this be just another side effect of ignorance? It has to be, what else could it be? Another reason why improving education is so extremely important.

Seeing foot steps in the snow or in the sand is knowing that others were here before you. Those footsteps symbolize the information left behind. But what if there were no footprints, would you believe that no one has been here before you? Or maybe you can't see the footprints because they are buried. We don't always see what is before us or behind us.

At 55 in 2016, over a billion people have died in my lifetime, people that didn't have to die, because the reasons why they died could have been avoided, if only they were given the proper information and knowledge, millions would still be here. Think about it, hardly any one dies from old age. That's just crazy, and that's a wake up call, we have a lot of problems to solve.

"How can you have a life be so rich and so full of experiences and yet not be enough? After all that I have experienced after living 50 years from 1960 to 2010, one of the most important things that I have discovered was that I still was missing a lot of valuable information and knowledge, which would have made my life a lot more productive and more a lot meaningful. But I am not sad by this discovery, I am exhilarated and liberated. I'm passing a wonderful baton."

"Nothing on this planet can be claimed as yours. Yes we need rules protecting our personal spaces, and we need rights to protect us from unjustified aggression, but we cannot lay claim to things that we did not create, things that could have never happened without you first receiving things. A gift is not ownership or possession, a gift is a Gift. The gift of life is an opportunity to create, life is not something a human can lay claim to, or lay claim of ownership to life's gifts, or, to use life to violate the rights and freedoms of others."

Just think about how much human potential has been given to you. What are you doing with this potential? Everything you have is from somebody else. If no one ever learned how do things in human history, you would not have anything today. The only way you could have something, like a tool, is to figured it out yourself, which is highly unlikely, because no one would be there to give you language. So lets see how you would do in life with no words or language to use. The results are not good, just look at the billion people living in poverty.

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"Starting something does not always mean that you will have the chance to see that something being finished. Starting certain things is like an investment in your grandchildren's grandchildren's future. Something's take time, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in your time. Some things get better with age, and other times, things become more valuable because we have learned to understand the information and knowledge that is important to us. Pass the Baton."

You should always be trying to move in a positive direction. So knowing what positive direction to take and when to take it is extremely important. Planning - Success.

If every human succeeded in making positive choices, the world would continually see improvements, instead of just having isolated improvements while degradation and suffering continues to grow. This is why Information and Knowledge is so extremely important to our education.

There's a difference between drive or motivation and having an obsession. To much drive may cause you to have blinders on and too little drive may make you vulnerable to distractions.

One of the hardest things in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which bridge to burn. (David Russell)

The way life treats you is a merciless mirror image of your attitude toward life.

It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Latin Proverb Phrases- Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)

The goal in life is to die young -- as late as possible. (Ashley Montagu, Anthropologist)

What is the difference between being alive and truly living?

It felt like God was holding my hand my whole life, and when it was time for me to learn, God would let go of my hand and let me fall to the ground. God did this to make sure that I was able to pick myself up off the ground all by myself. And when I finally did pick myself up off the ground, God was there to hold my hand again. If you feel that your life has no purpose or meaning it means that you have not yet asked all the right questions. And to know what those questions are you have to keep learning in everyway possible. Learn by doing, learn by seeing, learn by listening, learn by feeling, learn by trying. Sometimes picking yourself up off the ground takes a while, but when you finally do pick yourself up, someone will be there to hold your hand again, but maybe this time, someone else is holding your hand and looking up at you, so maybe the next time that God lets go of your hand you will not fall down, but if you do, you will know the sooner you get up the sooner you will be in Gods hands again, and the sooner you will be there for others to hold your hand as well.



Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


"Invictus" is Latin for "unconquered"
Poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903).
It was written in 1875 and first published in 1888


See it Through
When you're up against a trouble,
Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it's vain to try to dodge it,
Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
See it through!
Black may be the clouds about you
And your future may seem grim,
But don't let your nerve desert you;
Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
When with troubles you're beset,
But remember you are facing
Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
Don't give up, whatever you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
See it through!


You have to Follow it Through, which is not the same as Project Follow Through.

Gavin DeGraw - Follow Through (Youtube)


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