Feel free to apply and spread these quotations...

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

“War remains the decisive human failure.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

”Tell me and I forget, Teach me and I remember, Engage me and I learn.” - Chinese Proverb

"You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” – Sir Winston Churchill

“It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding.” - Upton Sinclair

“Not everything that can be counted counts…and not everything that counts can be counted.” -- Albert Einstein

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics and cynics….We need people who can dream things that never were.” – John F. Kennedy

“When I meet a man, I am not concerned about his opinions. I am concerned about the man.” – Martin Buber

“Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional.” - anonymous

“The most important thing going forward is to break the boundaries between people so we can operate as a single intelligence.” - David Bohm

“You don’t become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.” – Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

"To consciously evolve, we require clear vision of a compassionate future that draws out our enthusiastic participation in life." – Duane Elgin

“Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Much more than a dreamer is required to bring it to reality; but the dream must be there first.” - Robert Greenleaf

"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed - be it ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown - will be unavoidable." - Vaclav Havel, President, Czech Republic

Vaclav Havel, when asked what could change the direction of our present civilization, replied, "The only option is a change in the sphere of the spirit, in the sphere of human conscience. It is not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. We must develop a new understanding of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth."

"People are often unreasonable,Illogical, and self-centered;Forgive them anyway.If you are kind,People may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;Be kind anyway.If you are successful,You will win some false friends and some true enemies;Succeed anyway.If you are honest and frank,People may cheat you;Be honest and frank anyway.What you spend years building,Someone could destroy overnight;Build anyway.If you find serenity and happiness,Others may be jealous;Be happy anyway.The good you do today,People will often forget tomorrow;Do good anyway.Give the world the best you have,And it may never be enough;Give the world the best you've got anyway.You see, in the final analysis,It is between you and God;It was never between you and them anyway."- Mother Teresa


ARTHUR C. CLARKE'S LAWS

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he says it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Clarke's Second Law: The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible.

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

"Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible." - Albert Einstein

"The most useful knowledge comes spontaneously in response to questions. Your questions will help me to know what I would otherwise not know." - Robert Rabbin

"Leadership is everybody's business, and the leadership challenge is everybody's challenge. The next time you say to yourself. "Why don't they do something about this?" look into the mirror. Ask the person you see, "Why don't you do something about this?"
- Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

"Our world needs leaders whose eyes we trust, whose heart we know, whose soul is rampant in all they do, seen and unseen, heard and unheard, done and not done." - Rob Rabbin, Invisible Leadership: Igniting the Soul at Work

"Above all, leadership is a position of servanthood." - Max DePree, former Chair, Herman Miller, Inc.

"A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people's lives, for better or worse, sometime forever and ever." - Warren Bennis, An Invented Life

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." -- John F. Kennedy (from Greg Steltenpohl.)

"[I]t is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." --Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering

“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is that simple. It is that difficult.” -- Warren Bennis

“It’s not differences that divide us. It’s our judgments about each other that do.” - Meg Wheatley, Turning to One Another

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between the lightning bug and lightning.” - Mark Twain

“Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." - Albert Einstein (from quotes at http://stripe.colorado.edu/~judy/einstein/advice.html) doubtful accuracy as this saying has been stated differently a lot

“Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice, I can help the greatest of all causes - goodwill among men and peace on earth.” --Albert Einstein

"Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity." - management consultant Karl Albrecht

“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.” - Eric Hoffer, U.S. philosopher

“We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.” - Norman Lear, as interviewed in Leadership in a New Era

“In serving each other we become free.” - inscription in the top of King Arthur’s roundtable (from movie “First Knight” - starring Sean Connery playing Arthur)

“A little revolution now and then is a good thing.” - Thomas Jefferson

"Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together." -- Phil Jackson, author, Sacred Hoops; five time NBA championship coach

“One finds one’s destiny on the path one takes to avoid it.” - Carl Jung

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude." - Martin Luther King, Jr

“By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind.” - Edward T. Hall, anthropologist

“The leader sees what his system can become. He has the image in his mind. It’s not just a matter of data, it’s a matter of his dream. With apologies to Emerson, a system is more than the lengthened shadow of one man. It is the embodiment of a dream – a thought, a wish, a hope – made real. A leader is one who understands that our systems are only bounded by what we can dream." - John Gall, author, The Systems Bible: The Beginner’s Guide to Systems Large and Small (The Third Edition of Systemantics)

"When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure." - Rudolf Bahro, German green philosopher and activist

'Of all the creatures of earth, only human beings can change their patterns. Man alone is the architect of his destiny…Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.' -- William James

“You cannot recognize in another a quality you do not have yourself.” - Liu Shao, 18th century Chinese philosopher

“If the people speak and the king doesn’t listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the kings acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.” - Joan Chittistor, OSB, Benedictine Sister of Erie and international lecturer

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Dare to know." - a phrase translated from Sapere Aude as the motto of the Age of Enlightenment from an 1784 essay by Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”

“At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.” - Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian poet

“People say you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, but there are some tricks you can only teach an old dog.” - Marie Fielder, co-founder of The Fielding Institute

“One challenge of growing up in the twenty-first century will be to acquire a self-definition that can encompass person and planet, socially constructed self and transcendent being, organism and machine.” - Walter Truett Anderson, author, The Next Enlightenment

“A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.” - William James, American psychologist and philosopher

“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” - Seneca the Elder

“A stand is about adapting the world to your word. It creates a trend that others want to follow.” - Paul Dolan, President of Fetzer Vineyards in his book True to Our Roots

“Others are affected by what I am, and say, and do. And these others have also their sphere of influence. So that a single act of mine may spread in widening circles through a nation or humanity.” - William Ellery Channing, American Unitarian

“A great society is one in which the people of business think greatly of their function." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society - its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its art, its key institutions - rearranges itself. We are currently living through such a time." - Peter Drucker

“Talk is cheap because there’s more supply than demand.” - author unknown

“We are living through the most exciting, challenging and most critical time in human history. Never before has so much been possible; and never before has so much been at stake." - Peter Russell, British futurist, author, The Global Brain

“Perhaps the only limits to the human mind are those we believe in.” - Willis Harman

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive." - Howard Thurman, civil rights activist, theologian

"There are sufficient resources on this planet to answer the needs of all, but not enough to satisfy everyone's greed." - Gandhi

"Vision without action is a daydream, action without a vision is a nightmare.” - Japanese Proverb

“I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom
And God gave me problems to learn to solve.
I asked for prosperity
And God gave me a brain and brawn to work.
I asked for courage
And God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for love
And God gave me people to help.
I asked for favours
And God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.
- Sufi poem, attributed to Hazrat Inayar Khan

“A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation.” - Lewis Hyde, The Gift

“What am I then…? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts….their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name Goethe.” - Goeth

“Imagination is more important than knowledge, for while knowledge points to all there is, imagination points to all there will be” - Albert Einstein

“A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” - Maya Angelou

"I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except to dare to think, and to dare to go with the truth, and to dare to really love completely." -R. Buckminster (”Bucky”) Fuller

“The world is as you dream it.” - Shamantic teaching

“Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - anthropologist Margaret Mead

"The crisis is not out there in the world, it is within our own consciousness." - J. Krishnamurti

“Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” -- Ronald Reagan

“If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.” -- Joseph Sobran, Former Editor of the National Review

“We have only one thing to do, only this one thing: show the face of who we really are, that we and others may see the brilliance of that true face and know its redemptive love and wisdom. If we want to know how to do this, how to find and show the brilliant face of our inner truth, the answer is this: want to. We simply must want this more than anything else.” - Rob Rabbin, Igniting the Soul at Work

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come” - Victor Hugo, poet & novelist (1802-1885)

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desire and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

“Everything can be taken away 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.” – Victor Frankl

“Learning about ourselves is rather inconvenient because it turns the world we live in upside down.” - Peter Kingsley, author, Reality

“As a human phenomenon, however, freedom is all too human. Human freedom is finite freedom. Man is not free from conditions. But he is free to take a stand in regard to them. The conditions do not completely condition him. Within limits it is up to him whether or not he succumbs and surrenders to the conditions. He may as well rise above them and by so doing open up and enter the human dimension... Ultimately, man is not subject to the conditions that confront him; rather, these conditions are subject to his decision. Wittingly or unwittingly, he decides whether he will face up or give in, whether or not he will let himself be determined by the conditions.” - Victor Frankl, author, Psychotherapy and Existentialism

“The past is gone…the future is another matter. It is an open field of possibility.” - Howard Didsbury, Jr, futurist

“It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject it.” - Thomas Jefferson

“When people decide they want to be free…there is nothing that can stop them.” - Desmond Tutu

“Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works for only a few. To change this, we must learn to act toward each other and our environment in profoundly different ways.” - Vaclav Havel, President, Czech Republic, 1993-2003

“Humanity has been sleeping — and still steeps — lulled within the narrowly confining joys of its little closed loves. In the depths of the human multitude there slumbers an immense spiritual power which will manifest itself only when we have learnt how to break through the dividing walls of our egoism and raise ourselves up to an entirely new perspective, so that habitually and in a practical fashion we fix our gaze on universal realities.” - Teilhard de Chardin

“Planetary democracy does not yet exist but our global civilization is already preparing a place for it. It is the very Earth we inhabit linked with Heaven above us. Only in this setting can the mutuality and the commonality of the human race be newly created with reverence and gratitude for that which transcends each of us and all of us together.” - Vaclav Havel

“AlI change in history, all advance, comes from the non-conformity. If there had been no troublemakers, no dissenters, we should still be living in caves.” - Alan John Percivale Taylor, historian

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." - Henry David Thoreau

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

“Transformation is not automatic. It must be learned; it must be led.” – W. Edwards Deming

"Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world. Ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities." - Peter Senge


“As the proportion of people reaching higher states of consciousness increases, this inertia will decrease, and at the same time a supportive momentum in the new direction will start building up.” – Peter Russell, The Global Brain

“The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” – Charles DuBois, artist

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather my sparks should burn out in a blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than asleep, and permanent as a planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” - Jack London

“The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.” - William Sloan Coffin, former chaplain, Yale University

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us.” - Marianne Williamson (oft misquoted as spoken by Nelson Mandela)

"We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.” - His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama

“Worry is a terrible waste of imagination.” - unknown

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." - Max DuPree "Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - General Dwight D. Eisenhower "You do not lead by hitting people over the head — that's assault, not leadership." - General Dwight D. Eisenhower "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others. To remember the other world in this world is to live in your true inheritance.” - David Whyte, from What to Remember When Waking

“I’m an idealist without illusions.” – John F. Kennedy