Courage

  • “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.” – Cus D’Amato
  • “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.” – Soren Kirkegaard
  • “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” – Lao Tzu

Living well

  • “Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.” – John Wooden
  • “Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain
  • “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” – Norman Cousins
  • “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” – Albert Schweitzer

Simplicity

  • “Use simple words everyone knows, then everyone will understand.” – Winston Churchill
  • “If you say three things, you don’t say anything.” – James Carville
  • “Less is more and more is lazy.” – Jason McCarthy
  • “The greatest carver does the least cutting.” – Lao-Tzu

Being effective

  • “Never mistake activity for achievement.” – John Wooden
  • “It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” – Richard Feynman

Work

  • “Winning is a habit.” – Vince Lombardi
  • “The will to win is not nearly so important as the will to prepare to win.” – Vince Lombardi

Kindness

  • “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Attitude

  • “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” – John Wooden
  • “You become what you think about most of the time.” – Earl Nightingale
  • “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

Dreams

  • “Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.” – Mark Twain
  • “Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?” – Amelia Earheart

Goals

  • “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie
  • “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” – Napoleon Hill
  • “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is favorable.” – Seneca

Priorities

  • “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker

Curiosity

  • “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” – Albert Einstein
  • “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.” – Oscar Wilde
  • “Curiosity is more important than knowledge.” – Albert Einstein

Mission and Purpose

  • “The person who stands for nothing will fall for everything and can be felled by anything.” – Alexander Hamilton
  • “Man cannot stand a meaningless life.” – Carl Jung
  • “We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it.” – Eric Hoffer

Persistence

  • “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” – Dale Carnegie
  • “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
  • “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
  • “You never fail until you stop trying.” – Albert Einstein

Creativity

  • “Originality is the most dangerous word in the advertiser’s lexicon.” – Rosser Reeves

What people want

  • “The public does not know what it wants… there is no sure way of finding out until the idea is exposed under normal conditions of sale. If people could tell you in advance what they want, there would never have been a wheel, a lever, much less an automobile, an airplane or a TV set.” – Leo Burnett
  • “If I’d asked the public, they would have said they wanted a faster horse.” – Henry Ford
  • “Times change, people don’t.” – John Caples

Marketing & advertising

  • “Find out what people want – and show them how to get it.” – Bernard Baruch
  • “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker
  • “Advertising is salesmanship multiplied.” – Claude Hopkins
  • “People buy stories… not things.” – Dan Kennedy
  • “Let’s give them something to talk about.” – Bonnie Raitt
  • “Advertising is what you do when you can’t be there in person.” – Fairfax Cone
  • “There’s no more serious surgery in the world than separating a man from his money.” – Milt Pierce

Generosity

  • “You can have anything you want in life just as long as you help enough people to get what they want in life” — Zig Ziglar
  • “What helps people helps business” – Leo Burnett

Taking action

  • “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
  • “Motion beats meditation – you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it GOING!” – Gary Halbert
  • “Perfection is spelled ‘paralysis'” – Winston Churchill
  • “It’s easier to correct movement in the wrong direction than to start movement” – General Norman Schwarzkopf
  • “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” – Stephen King
  • “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.” – E. B. White
  • “The more one does the more one can do.” – Amelia Earhart
  • “Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” – Isabel Allende
  • “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General George S. Patton

The right message

  • “Your message should single out your prospect like a bell-boy paging a man in a crowded hotel lobby.” – Claude Hopkins
  • “What you say is more important than how you say it.” – David Ogilvy
  • “No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration” – Claude Hopkins

Wealth
“There are lots of legitimate reasons to be poor. None to stay poor.” – Dan Kennedy

Research

  • “Something you know about your customer may be more important than anything you know about your product.” – Harvey McKay
  • “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.” – Mark Twain

Business

  • “The purpose of a customer is not to create a sale. The purpose of a sale is to create a customer.” – Dan Kennedy
  • “Build ’em strong and sell ’em cheap.” – Marcel Bich
  • “Concentrate on one product used by everyone, every day.” – Marcel Bich

Beware the majority

  • “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain
  • “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” – George Carlin

Self-determination

  • “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” – Mark Twain
  • “If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.” ― Frank Zappa
  • “Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.” ― Confucius
  • “We become what we think about most.” – Earl Nightingale

Opportunity

  • “Opportunities multiply as they are seized” – Sun Tzu
  • “There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.” – General Douglas McArthur
  • “If you can take the worst, take the risk.” – Dr Joyce Brothers

Humility

  • “Never start thinking you’re wonderful.” – Drayton Bird
  • “Feeling comfortable is a sign you’ve stopped learning.” – Unknown
  • “You are worth about 3 dollars in chemicals.” – Carl Sagan

Learning

  • “You cannot teach people anything, you can only help them discover it within themselves.” – Galileo
  • “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” – Zig Ziglar
  • “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” – Mark Twain

Knowledge

  • “We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” – Carl Sagan
  • “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela