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

Mignon McLaughlin

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Albert Einstein

Author: Bodie Thoene

- Plato (428 – 348 BC)

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.

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

Ellen Goodman (1941 -)

Ellen is an American journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist.

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

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.

Author Unknown

Author: Unknown
.

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847, October 18, 1931)

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.

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.

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.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960 – )

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.

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.

Author: Unknown

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

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.

Author Unknown

Author Unknown

Author Unknown.

Robin Sharma (1965 – )

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.

Author: Brainythoughts.com

Gandhi

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

Socrates

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

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

Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

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

Albert Einstein

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.

Author Unknown

Author Unknown

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

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.

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

“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.

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

Attributed to Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

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.

Louis V Gerstner, Jr.
Former CEO, IBM

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.

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”.

Paraphrased Winston Churchill

Tim Maher-DeTroyer

Ashleigh Brilliant (Ashley Brilliant)

Warren Buffett (1930 – ) American investor, businessman and philanthropist.

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.

Jeff Davidson

Author Unknown

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.

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”

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.