Brainy Quote – The oil is running out

January 27th, 2012

“My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet aeroplane. His son will ride a camel.”

Saudi saying
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Brainy Quote – Good timber does not grow with ease

September 25th, 2011

“Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees”

Douglas Malloch

Brainy Quote – Excellence then, is not an act

August 28th, 2011

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist
Aristotle

Brainy Thought – Buying cycle

August 5th, 2011

“Too many people buy things they don’t even need, with money they don’t even have, to impress people they don’t even like.”

Ali-Azri Hassan

Brainy Thought – Wisdom & Knowledge

July 22nd, 2011

“Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of ass”

Japanese Proverb

Brainy Thought – Inclusive leadership

July 20th, 2011

“None of us is as smart as all of us”

Japanese Proverb

Brainy Quote – Persevere against objections

July 8th, 2011

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
Samuel_Johnson

Brainy Thought – firewood & the fire of knowledge

July 5th, 2011

“As a blazing fire turns firewood into ashes, so does the fire of knowledge burn to ashes all reactions to material activities.”

The Bhagavad Gita is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text. It is considered among the most important texts in the history of literature and philosophy.

Bhagavad Gita

Brainy Quote – Forgiveness

June 21st, 2011

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”

Author: Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) Pseudo-name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens – US humorist, novelist, short story author, and wit; wrote novels “Tom Sawyer” 1876, “Huckleberry Finn” 1884, “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” 1889
Mark Twain

Brainy Thought – Courage to persevere

June 18th, 2011

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”

Mahatma Gandhi (October 2 1869 – January 30 1948) Describing the stages of a winning strategy of nonviolent activism.
Mahatma Gandhi

Brainy Quote – Thomas Edison & Discontent

February 15th, 2011

“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”

Thomas A. Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison


American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and can therefore be credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Some of the inventions credited to him were not completely original, but improvements of earlier inventions, or were actually created by his numerous employees working under his direction. Nevertheless, Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,097 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

February 11th, 2011

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) German philosopher.

Schopenhauer’s metaphysical analysis of will, his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known thinkers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank, Carl Gustav Jung, Leo Tolstoy, and Jorge Luis Borges.

Brainy Thought – Failure is not falling down

February 10th, 2011

“Failure is not falling down, but staying down. Get up. Act!”

Author: Unknown

Brainy Quote – Worry; fumbling way of looking at little things

January 21st, 2011

“Worry is spiritual near-sightedness, a fumbling way of looking at little things and magnifying their value.”

Anna Robertson Brown Lindsay (1864–1948) American author, and the first woman to earn a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania.

Brainy Quote – Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to

January 21st, 2011

“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.”

Epictetus (AD 55 – AD 135) Greek Stoic philosopher.

Epictetus

Brainy Thought – Adversity

January 21st, 2011

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist.

Brainy Quote – the price you paid to get what you used to want

April 9th, 2010

“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913 – 1983) American journalist and author.

Mignon McLaughlin

Mignon McLaughlin

Brainy Quote – Wealth is not his who has it

April 9th, 2010

“Wealth is not his who has it, but his who enjoys it.”

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Brainy Quote – what dies inside

April 9th, 2010

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein

Brainy Quote – Apathy

March 16th, 2010

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.”

Author: Bodie Thoene

Brainy Quote – Plato & Laws

January 24th, 2010

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”

- Plato (428 – 348 BC)
Plato
Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy.

Brainy Thought – If you want to become whole

October 15th, 2009

“If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.”

Author: Tao Te Ching or Dao De Jing. Written around 6th century BC by the sage Laozi (or Lao Tzu, “Old Master”).
Yin_and_Yang

Brainy Thought – normal

September 1st, 2009

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to the job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, the car, and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.”

Ellen Goodman (1941 -)
Ellen Goodman
Ellen is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist.

Brainy Quote – Art washes away

August 31st, 2009

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)
Pablo_picasso
Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Commonly known simply as Picasso, he is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work.

Brainy Thought – diet advice

August 28th, 2009

“Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper”

Author Unknown

Brainy Thought – waking rational abilities

August 6th, 2009

“The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams.”

Author: Unknown
.

Brainy Quote – Thomas Edison, vision

July 19th, 2009

“Vision without execution is hallucination.”

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847, October 18, 1931)
Thomas Edison
American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Dubbed “The Wizard of Menlo Park” by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and can therefore be credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Some of the inventions credited to him were not completely original, but improvements of earlier inventions, or were actually created by his numerous employees working under his direction. Nevertheless, Edison is considered one of the most prolific inventors in history, holding 1,097 U.S. patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Brainy Quote – Khalil Gibran – Stand together

July 13th, 2009

“Stand together, yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Khalil Gibran (1883 – 1931) was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Author of The Prophet, a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923.
Kahlil Gibran

Khalil Gibran was Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon, as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career.

Brainy Thought – Exec Frontal Lobes

July 9th, 2009

“Being an executive does not require very developed frontal lobes, but rather a combination of charisma, a capacity to sustain boredom, and the ability to shallowly perform on harrying schedules.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 – )
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A specialist in financial derivatives, he held a “day job” in a lengthy senior trading and financial mathematics career in a number of New York City’s Wall Street firms, before starting a second career as a scholar in the epistemology of chance events to focus on his project of mapping how to live and act in a world we do not understand, and how to come to grips with randomness and the unknown – which includes his black swan theory of unexpected rare events.

Brainy Quote – you are the window

June 13th, 2009

“Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”

George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist. During his career Shaw wrote more than sixty plays. He was uniquely honoured by being awarded both a Nobel Prize (1925) for his contribution to literature and an Oscar (1938) for Pygmalion. He was a strong advocate for socialism and women’s rights, a vegetarian and teetotaller, and a harsh critic of formal education.

Brainy Thought – Fate

May 31st, 2009

“Fate does not always call upon us at the time of our own choosing.”

Author: Unknown

Brainy Thought – It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly…

May 25th, 2009

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection”

The Bhagavad Gita (5th – 2nd Century BC)

Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

Krishna, Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is revered as a sacred scripture of Hinduism, and considered as one of the most important religious classics of the world. The teacher of the Bhagavad Gita is Krishna, who is regarded by the Hindus as the supreme manifestation of the Lord Himself, and is referred to within as Bhagavan—the divine one. The Bhagavad Gita is commonly referred to as The Gita for short.

Brainy Thought – Think deeply, speak gently

April 29th, 2009

“Think deeply, speak gently, love much, laugh often, work hard, give freely, pay promptly, be kind”

Author Unknown

Brainy Thought – Luck

April 22nd, 2009

“Luck is: labouring under correct knowledge”

Author Unknown

Brainy Quote – By the yard

March 31st, 2009

“By the yard its hard, but inch by inch it’s a cinch.”

Author Unknown.

Brainy Quote – Stop for gas

March 25th, 2009

“Saying that you don’t have time to improve your thoughts and your life is like saying that you don’t have time to stop for gas because you are too busy driving. Eventually it will catch up with you.”

Robin Sharma (1965 – )

Brainy Quote – Don’t compromise yourself

March 15th, 2009

“Don’t compromise yourself; you are all you’ve got.”

Janis Joplin (1943 – 1970) was an American singer, songwriter, and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Brainy Thought – Better, Harder, Faster, Sooner

March 14th, 2009

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but do it better, do it harder, do it faster, and do it sooner.”

Author: Brainythoughts.com

Brainy Quote – deliberate and voluntary reduction

December 10th, 2008

“Civilisation, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment.”

Gandhi

Brainy Thought – hold your own

December 6th, 2008

“Hold your own, know your name, go your own way.”

Jason Mraz (1977 – ) American grammy-nominated singer-songwriter.
Jason Mraz

Brainy Quote – idleness

November 30th, 2008

“He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who may be better employed.”

Socrates

Brainy Quote – multitudes

November 27th, 2008

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”

Walter Whitman (1819 – 1892) American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism.
Walt Whitman

Brainy Quote – trueness

November 15th, 2008

“To thine own self be true”

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) English playwright and poet.

Brainy Thought – unrecognised talents

November 12th, 2008

“I have many unrecognised talents, but my faults have somehow succeeded in securing wide recognition.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

Brainy Thoughts – Hope (Barack Obama Quote)

November 9th, 2008

“Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path.

It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.

Barack Hussein Obama II (1961 -) President-elect of the United States, and the first African American to be elected President of the United States

Brainy Quote – Einstein on challenges

November 9th, 2008

“The significant challenges we face cannot be resolved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

Brainy Thought – What your enemy fears most

November 9th, 2008

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer (1902 – 1983) was an American social writer. He produced ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983 by President of the United States Ronald Reagan.

Brainy Thought – Stupidity

October 8th, 2008

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Author Unknown

Brainy Quote – Make your own luck

September 8th, 2008

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”

Author Unknown

August 5th, 2008

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) American essayist, philosopher, poet.
Emerson

Brainy Quote – decent egg

August 1st, 2008

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”

C. S. Lewis
C S Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898 – 1963) was an Irish writer and scholar. Lewis’s works are diverse and include medieval literature, literary criticism, radio broadcasts, and fiction relating to the fight between good and evil. Author of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.

Brainy Thought – know that you do not know

July 17th, 2008

“To know that you do not know is best.”

Author: Lao Tzu (4th or 6th century BC) Philosopher of ancient China and central figure in Taoism.
Lao Tzu

“As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know. There are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

-Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Donald Rumsfeld (born July 9, 1932) is a United States businessman, politician, the 13th Secretary of Defense under President Gerald Ford from 1975 to 1977, and the 21st Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006. He is both the youngest (43 years old) and the oldest (68 years old) person to have held the position, as well as the only person to have held the position for two non-consecutive terms, and the second longest serving. Rumsfeld is also one of the most controversial defense secretaries in US history.
Donald Rumsfeld

Brainy Thought – live up to principles

June 3rd, 2008

“It’s far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”

Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (1900 – 1965) American politician, noted for his intellectual demeanor and advocacy of liberal causes in the Democratic Party.
Adlai Stevenson

Brainy Thought – Beggars

May 17th, 2008

“Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.”

Attributed to Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. He is credited with “Fordism”, that is, the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line which would finish a car in 98 minutes, coupled with high wages for his workers—notably the $5.00 a day pay scale adopted in 1914. Ford, though poorly educated, had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents.

Brainy Quote – predicting rain

May 1st, 2008

“No credit can be given for predicting rain – only for building arks.”

Louis V Gerstner, Jr.
Former CEO, IBM

Brainy Quote – Greatness

April 27th, 2008

“Some men are born with greatness, some men achieve greatness, and some men have greatness thrust upon them.”

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet. His surviving works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Brainy Quote – unimportant protocol

April 18th, 2008

“Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.”

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907 – 1988) American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called “the dean of science fiction writers”, he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of “hard science fiction”.
Robert Heinlein

Brainy Thought – Courage & Failure

April 18th, 2008

“Courage is the capacity to go from failure to failure with increased enthusiasm!”

Paraphrased Winston Churchill

Brainy Quote – Truth vs Honesty

April 12th, 2008

“The truth is merely a matter of fact whereas honesty is a question of attitude.”

Tim Maher-DeTroyer

Brainy Quote – Shoot first

April 6th, 2008

“To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

Brainy Thought – First principles

April 5th, 2008

“You are neither right nor wrong because others agree with you. You are right because your facts are right.”

Warren Buffett (1930 – ) American investor, businessman and philanthropist.
Warren Buffet
He is regarded as one of the world’s greatest stock market investors, and is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. With an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world as of March 5, 2008.

Buffett is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. His 2006 annual salary is about $100,000, which is on the low side of senior executive remuneration in other comparable companies, and when he spent $9.7 million of Berkshire’s funds on a business jet in 1989, he jokingly named it “The Indefensible” because of his past criticisms of such purchases by other CEOs. He lives in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, today valued at around $700,000.

Brainy Thought – Procrastination

March 31st, 2008

“The energy and anxiety that you invest in putting off an activity can consume more energy than is required to perform the activity.”

Jeff Davidson

Brainy Thought – problems

March 9th, 2008

“Problems are those things we see when we take our eyes off the goal.”

Author Unknown

Brainy Quote – Shoulders

February 27th, 2008

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Sir Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727) English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, inventor and natural philosopher. He is often regarded as the most influential scientist in history and is best known for discovering the Laws of Gravity.
Newton Issac Newton

Brainy Quote – attitude

February 17th, 2008

“Life is an attitude. It’s what you choose to believe, always.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer (1940 -) American author and lecturer. His 1976 book Your Erroneous Zones has sold over 30 million copies and is one of the best-selling books of all time. It is said to have “brought humanistic ideas to the masses”
Wayne Dyer

Brainy Quote – new oceans

February 16th, 2008

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide (1869 – 1951) – French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide’s career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.
Andre Gide

Brainy Quote – Rat race

February 10th, 2008

“A rat, even if he gets out of the rat race, is still a rat”

Author Unknown

Brainy Thought – software

February 5th, 2008

“A fool with a tool is still a fool”

Author Unknown

Brainy Thought – choose your family

January 3rd, 2008

You can choose your family but you can’t choose your friends. Or is it the other way around?

Brainy Thought 2008

Longevity, like intelligence or good looks, is largely a matter of heredity: choose your parents with care.

Author: Edward Paul Abbey

Brainy Quote – Simple

November 23rd, 2007

“Nothing is true, but that which is simple.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) German writer of poetry, drama, literature, theology, humanism, and science.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Brainy Quote – great and noble tasks

November 22nd, 2007

“I long to accomplish great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to graduate from college.
Helen Keller

Brainy Thought – Salaried ignorance

November 15th, 2007

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Original Author: Upton Sinclair
More recently used by Al Gore (born 1948) in the documentary movie “An Inconvenient Truth” 2006.
Al Gore
Al Gore was forty-fifth vice president of the United States, serving from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was shared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, headed by Rajendra K. Pachauri (Delhi, India). The award was given “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change” on October 12, 2007.

An Inconvenient Truth documents the evidence for anthropogenic global warming and warns of the consequences of people not making immediate changes to their behavior. In late July, it surpassed Bowling for Columbine as the third-highest-grossing documentary in U.S. history

Brainy Quote – The way you are treated in life

November 14th, 2007

“You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.”

Dr. Wayne Dyer (born 1940) Popular American author and lecturer.
Wayne Dyer
Dyer spent much of his adolescence in an orphanage. He has a Doctorate of Education in counseling, and was a guidance counselor in Detroit at the high school level and a professor of counselor education at St. John’s University in New York.

Brainy Thought – babies

October 27th, 2007

Baby B
“A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

Author: Carl August Sandburg (1878 – 1967) American poet, historian, novelist, journalist, biographer, and autobiographer. During the course of his career, Sandburg won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years) and one for his collection The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg.

Brainy Thought – Learn from others

October 24th, 2007

“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”

Brian Tracy

Brainy Quote – Bertrand Russell

October 12th, 2007

“It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.”

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970). British philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, pacifist, and prominent rationalist.
Bertrand Russell

Brainy Thoughts

October 11th, 2007

“Hear and you forget; see and you remember; do and you understand.”

“See one, do one, teach one.”

Authors Unknown.

Brainy Quote – Spoon Feeding

October 7th, 2007

“Spoon feeding in the long-run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

E__M__Forster
Edward Morgan Forster (1879 – 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society.

Brainy Thought – mistakes

October 5th, 2007

“I find my mistakes interesting, my confusions even more so — they are like windows into my thinking.”

Author Unknown

Brainy Quote – Churchill & Courage

September 29th, 2007

“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen”

Sir Winston Churchill

Brainy Quote – procrastination, half-measures

September 28th, 2007

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place, we are entering a period of consequences.”

Sir Winston Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman, orator and strategist, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army. He has been studied to a unique extent as part of modern British and world history. A prolific author, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his own historical writings.
Winston Churchill

Brainy Though – preparing

September 20th, 2007

“It is not the will to win that counts, it’s the will to prepare to win that makes all the difference.”

Author Unknown.

Brainy Poem – If you think you are beaten, you are

July 30th, 2007

“If you think you are beaten, you are,
If you think you dare not, you don’t
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It is almost certain you won’t.

“If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost
For out of 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 a prize.

“Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!”

Author Unknown

Brainy Quote – blaming circumstances

July 29th, 2007

“People are always blaming circumstances for what they are. I do not 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 cannot find them, they make them.”

George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw

Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist. During his career Shaw wrote more than sixty plays. He was uniquely honoured by being awarded both a Nobel Prize (1925) for his contribution to literature and an Oscar (1938) for Pygmalion. He was a strong advocate for socialism and women’s rights, a vegetarian and teetotaller, and a harsh critic of formal education.

Brainy Thought – learn

July 9th, 2007

“Give a man a fish, and he will eat for today. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to learn, and he will not always have to eat fish.”

Author Unknown.

Brainy Quote – Chance

July 5th, 2007

“Chance favours the prepared mind”

Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) was a French chemist best known for his remarkable breakthroughs in microbiology. His experiments confirmed the germ theory of disease, also reducing mortality from puerperal fever (childbed), and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He is best known to the general public for showing how to stop milk and wine from going sour – this process came to be called pasteurization.

Brainy Thought – absurdity of tourism

May 17th, 2007

“What an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile attempt to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”

Bill Bryson, OBE (1951 – ) is a best-selling American-born author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on scientific subjects (A Short History of Nearly Everything). He has lived for most of his adult life in England.
Bill Bryson

Brainy Thought – work

May 15th, 2007

“Thunder is impressive, but it is lightning that does the work.”

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens), was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Famous Quote – confident ignorance

May 14th, 2007

“The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along. “

Famous Quote, author unknown

Brainy Quote – Mother Teresa, nothing I cant handle

May 12th, 2007

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

Mother Teresa, (1910 – 1997), was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work.
Mother Teresa

For over forty years, she ministered to the needs of the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying of Calcutta (Kolkata). As her religious order grew she expanded her ministry to other countries. By the 1970s she had become internationally famed as a humanitarian and advocate for the poor and helpless, due in part to a documentary, and book Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge

Brainy Quotes – Mother Teresa

May 12th, 2007

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”
Brainy Quotes from Mother Teresa

“Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.”
Brainy Quotes from Mother Teresa

Ashleigh Brilliant Brainy Quotes

May 11th, 2007

“The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!”
Brainy Quotes by: Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

“My life has been greatly influenced by many books which I have never read.”
Brainy Quotes by: Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

“I am irrevocably committed to being permanently indecisive.”
Brainy Quotes by: Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

“I have you, you have me. At least one of us is lucky.”
Brainy Quotes by: Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

“Some of my troubles are so familiar, I know them by their first names.”
Brainy Quotes by: Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

Brainy Thought – torn between DOing and BEing

May 11th, 2007

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

Elwyn Brooks White (1899 – 1985) American essayist, author, humorist, poet and literary stylist.
E B White

Famous Quote – Samurai zen

May 10th, 2007

“No fear, no surprise, no hesitation, no doubt.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584 – 1645) also known as Shinmen Takezo, Miyamoto Bennosuke, or by his Buddhist name Niten Doraku, was a famous Japanese samurai.
Miyamoto Musashi

Miyamoto Musashi is considered by many to have been one of the most skilled swordsmen in history. Musashi, as he is often simply known, became legendary through his outstanding swordsmanship in numerous duels, even from a very young age. He is the founder of the Hyoho Niten Ichi-ryu or Niten-ryu style of swordsmanship and wrote The Book of Five Rings, a book on strategy, tactics, and philosophy that is still studied today.

Famous Quote – Courage in business

May 5th, 2007

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse. “

Henry Ford

Famous Quote – Henry Ford Zen

May 4th, 2007

“Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.”

Henry Ford

Famous Thought – no idea

May 3rd, 2007

Not only do I not know the answer, I have no idea what the question is!

Author Unknown

Brainy Thought – Wealth & useful service

April 13th, 2007

“Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.”

Attributed to Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)
Henry Ford

Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. He is credited with “Fordism”, that is, the mass production of large numbers of inexpensive automobiles using the assembly line which would finish a car in 98 minutes, coupled with high wages for his workers notably the $5.00 a day pay scale adopted in 1914. Ford, though poorly educated, had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put a dealership in every city in North America, and in major cities on six continents.

Brainy Quote – Self responsibility

April 12th, 2007

“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”

William Ernest Henley (1849 – 1903). An English poet, critic and editor.
William Ernest Henley

Brainy Quote – To be without, to happiness

April 10th, 2007

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) British philosopher, logician, mathematician and advocate for social reform.
Bertrand Russell