# Inspirational quotations



## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

I use quotations a lot in my work coaching clients in emotional intelligence. it's a way of distancing me, personally, from the nessage I want to convey.

So I have lots to share.

The one which I am finding really helpful at the moment is Hamlet's advice to Rosencrantz (II ii): 

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so

At a time when it is tempting to think that bad things are happening, it is important to use this quotation to confirm that it is only how we approach a situation that determines whether it is good or bad for us.

What quotations do you find inspire you - and why?


----------



## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

"A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us."

-- Blaise Pascal



"'Optimism,' said Cacambo, 'what is that?'
'Alas!' replied Candide, 'it is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.'"

-- Voltaire



"In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value -- and if there were, it would be of no value."

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein


----------



## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

"Some person much wiser than me once said that if you never discovered something you would die for, then you haven't lived. Well, you are both proof that I have lived."

--Jade Goody

(Okay, she's an unlikely source for a memorable quote, but still I think it speaks for itself).

​


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

"Regrets are degrading" ~ Voltaire


----------



## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

As a court reporter with endless deadlines, I need to be reminded to proceed efficiently but carefully:

_It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement. Mabel Newcomer_

I've found that people would rather have me listen than preach to them:

_Be brief; say much in a few words; 
Be as one who knows and can still hold his tongue. 
Sirach 32:8_

Holding my tongue also has kept me out of trouble. (And Eliot Spitzer should have heeded his own advice.)
_
Never write when you can talk. Never talk when you can nod. And never put anything in an email. Eliot Spitzer_

Pain is not desirable, but it is necessary. Finding meaning in pain is the key.

_Oysters build out of wounds a pearl and create within the gap of pain a jewel. May we be so wise. 
Richard Shannon, The Peacock and the Phoenix.

To find out who you are, you need to get into trouble. There is no substitute for failure. Garrison Keillor_

This quote from the movie Lawrence of Arabia helped me endure seven days of shingles, which felt like five strands of barbed wire were strapped to my abdomen:

_The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts. Lawrence of Arabia

_


----------



## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I shall be the token misery guts for a second before leaving the room after having been sufficiently indulgent, but I feel compelled to say that inspirational quotes are one of my pet-peeves, and inspiration is the last thing I get from them. I find them to be, without exception, trivial, vapid sentiments which masquerade as insightful or enlightening, and I find few things quite so annoying.

The trouble with them is that, superficially, they seem to offer a new perspective or a thought-provoking idea (though the worst ones pretend to be all-encompassing glimpses of eternal truth), but the world is so vastly complex and the ideas presented are so pithy and bland that they are always flawed - deeply flawed - because _nothing_ about the intricacies of human nature (and humans are almost always their subject; we're not talking about terse mathematical proofs!) can be surmised in something so short and dull. They are not only hollow and misleading then, they are also degrading and defiant in their refusal to acknowledge that the world is not quite so black and white.

What's more, the ones that are passed around on the internet tend to be the kind of new age, instinct-worshipping, self-help, mantra-driven drivel that is even more supremely detestable. And the most pernicious thing about these supposedly life-altering nuggets of wisdom is that it's implicit that the power is in our hands to change our lives for the better, and thus it is our own fault when things go wrong or seem irreparable. A prime example of this is the extremely frequent belittling of mental health issues with vast swathes of uninformed, teary-eyed teenage turnip-heads thinking that they are clinically depressed and need only some uplifting words from Justin Bieber to cure them - thus, they pass unbelievably shallow and insulting images around the web claiming that those who are depressed are in such a state because they're too focused on the past or some such nonsense, as though there is a magic switch to be flicked that will cure all.

I'm sure the quotations shared here will be much higher-brow and actually have citations from intellectual writings from the past few centuries, but I have never learned anything or been helped by a single sentence before, and I never will.

Forgive me for my unsolicited rant (though I have to say it was rather satisfying for me!) - there are only so many unbearably banal image macros with motivational sayings that a person can stomach.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

"Is anyone aware
of ways to catch a hare?"


-- Chevalier René d'Aramis Godefroy Amaury de Malphètes, comte de Montmirail, d'Apremont et de Papincourt d'Herblay de Vannes de Saint-Thibault-des-Vignes-Dammartin-sur-Tigeaux-Germigny-sous-Coulombs, Bishop of Vannes, Duke of Alameda, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Well, Polednice, these things are like the sound-bytes or five second grabs of philosophy. But they've been around for ages. _Confucius says_...

Anyway, the late Dr. Fred Hollows, an eye doctor who set up a foundation to save the sight of poor people in remote Aboriginal communities in Australia, as well as in poor countries overseas, is a hero of mine. He was an avowed Communist, but one who actually practised what he preached (& he actually didn't preach, he just did things).

The first quote is about his philosophy of treating all patients equally, regardless of their income or status, etc. But it goes beyond medical matters, as the other quote shows -

_"Every eye is an eye, when you're doing the surgery there that is just as important as if you were doing eye surgery on the prime minster or the king."

"To my mind, having a care and concern for others is the highest of the human qualities. I believe that the basic attribute of mankind is to look after each other"_


----------



## Lunasong (Mar 15, 2011)

"Results, not excuses."

~My elementary school band director. I have tried to live by this my whole life.


----------



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

One of my all-time favorites: 

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible". - H. L. Mencken


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Some days you're the bug; some days you're the windshield.


----------



## reffohelgnid (Mar 12, 2012)

"We are born and we die; and between these two most important events of our lives more or less time elapses which we have to waste somehow or other. In the end it does not seem to matter much whether we have done so in making money, or practising law, or reading or playing, or in any other way, as long as we felt we were deriving a maximum of happiness out of our doings." -- Clarence Darrow


----------



## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

"Everyody's got to be somewhere" Spike Milligan


----------



## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

"The end never justifies the means"
-Jean Renoir


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

"People can be awfully mean, but sometimes the end justifies the mean."

- Paraphrase of Michael Scott


----------



## Kowtow (May 2, 2012)

I love the saying from Dr Suess, I think: Be who you are, and say what you mean, because those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter. I live by that one!


----------



## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Polednice said:


> but I have never learned anything or been helped by a single sentence before, and I never will.


 ~~ Polednice, "the Internet"

the wise learn many things from their foes ~~ Aristophanes, "The Birds"

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced; even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. ~~ John Keats, letter 1819

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. ~~ Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Dawn"

Few maxims are true in every respect. ~~ Marquis de Vauvenargues, "Reflections and Maxims"

Solomon made a book of proverbs, but a book of proverbs never made a Solomon ~~ anonymous


----------



## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

_If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear _- George Orwell

I like quotations, so find particularly interesting this one:
_Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another._ Ambrose Bierce


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. 
Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. 
Do not walk beside me either. 
Just pretty much leave me alone.


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

"In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

-- von Neumann




By the way, "understand" = "get used to"


----------



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Dodecaplex said:


> By the way, "understand" = "get used to"


If that's so, then Mr von Neumann has just stated:

"In mathematics, you dont understand things, you just understand them."


----------



## Dodecaplex (Oct 14, 2011)

Precisely! Ex falso quodlibet!


----------



## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Polednice said:


> ... I have never learned anything or been helped by a single sentence before, *and I never will.*


That's a belief and you're determined to be right about it! As Chuck Spezzano said "would you rather be right or happy?"



Sid James said:


> Well, Polednice, these things are like the sound-bytes or five second grabs of philosophy. But they've been around for ages...


I think the best of them are more than that - they're real syntheses or distillations of more complex sets of ideas. Of course, as Polednice points out, many of the one liners that people find motivating are, to us, irredeemably banal but, if people find them of value, and can perhaps be better poeple as a result, it would be churlish to be too harsh about them.

And I did deliberately title the thread "Inspirational quotations". I think "inspirational" and "motivating" are different concepts and one would like to think the fomer was higher than the latter.


----------



## myaskovsky2002 (Oct 3, 2010)

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable. 

George Bernard Shaw 


Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

George Bernard Shaw

:tiphat:

Martin


----------



## sheffmark (Apr 9, 2012)

Dont eat yellow snow!!


----------



## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

Who said that one?


----------



## sheffmark (Apr 9, 2012)

Well i said it once!!:lol:


----------



## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I heard Frank Zappa said it once as well.


----------



## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

Jeremy Marchant said:


> As Chuck Spezzano said "would you rather be right or happy?"


You can be both but that makes everyone else unhappy and yourself unpopular! :lol:


----------



## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. ~~ John Dryden, "Imitation of Horace"


----------



## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

How do we know what is reality?
My perception of the sonata for cello & piano by Debussy (playing on my cd) maybe totally different than yours? It's excellent by the way.
How can we define a belief?
I "think" I'm happy (the voices tell me I am) therefore I am 
Deep questions here
Are you ready to jump off the wheel?


----------



## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

I don't know if he did.
But he did state:

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid


----------



## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

Another Zappa quote, he's one of my all time favourites


Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them in the ***.


----------



## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I don't think people would understand my Zappa post unless they saw the post that was in this thread that was subsequently deleted.


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in
their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a
mile away and you have their shoes.


----------



## sah (Feb 28, 2012)

As you are talking about Zappa:

_Talking about music is like dancing about architecture._

I firstly read that as a sentence by Zappa, but it seems I was wrong:

http://www.paclink.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm


----------



## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

The quickest way to double your money, is to fold it in
half and put it back in your pocket.


----------



## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

Three universal maxims to live by, from Carnegie, Shakespeare (Polonius) and the Bible (Matthew, KJV) respectively:
1) Sell in the language of the buyer.
2) This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
3) Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
GG


----------



## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Maybe not 'inspirational' but certainly informative and helpful:

"Inspiration is for amateurs." ~ Chuck Close


----------



## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

A couple from *Nelson Mandela *-

_"Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished."

"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination." _

Inspirational, since he was almost 30 years political prisoner of South African apartheid regime.


----------



## WolfAlphaX (May 7, 2012)

Some of my favourite is:
When nothing goes right...go left
If you want the rainbow you gotta put up with the rain
Sometimes all you can do is laugh to keep yourself from crying
Move on. It's just a chapter in the past. But don't close the book. Just turn the page
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars.


----------

