Daniel Goleman, US psychologist, author (b. 1946)
A wise man knows everything; a shrewd one everybody.
Fortune cookie
If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter. I do not mean simply the famous people of the world, but people from every walk and condition of life.
Eleanor Roosevelt, US United Nations delegate (1884-1962)
Resistance
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Woodrow Wilson, US President (1856-1924)
People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.
Charles Kettering, US engineer, inventor (1876-1958)
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.
Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian political theorist (1469-1527)
The soft-minded man fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.
Martin Luther King Jr, US civil rights leader (1929-1968)
Men often oppose a thing merely because they had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
Alexander Hamilton, US statesman (1757-1804)
Every advance in civilisation has been denounced while it was still recent.
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, mathematician (1872-1970)
He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.
James Russell Lowell, US poet, critic, statesman (1819-1891)
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
Hal Abelson, US computer academic, author
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is in the cemetery.
Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister (1916-1995)
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
W Edwards Deming, US statistician, author (1900-1993)
The sad fact is that organisations change as little as they can rather than as much as they should.
Barry A Stein, US management author, consultant (b. 1955)
Change is always a threat when done to people, but it’s embraced as an opportunity when it is done by people.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, US academic, management author (b. 1943)
You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.
Navajo proverb
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
Peter Medaway, Brazilian/British biologist (1915-1987)
Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the greatest harmony.
Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher (535-475 BC)
Risk
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.
Cornelius Tacitus, Roman historian (55-120 AD)
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will.
People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.
Marcel Proust, French author (1871-1922)
A ship in harbour is safe.
But that is not what ships are built for.
William Shedd, US author, moralist (1820-1894)
People cannot discover new oceans
until they lose sight of the shore.
André Gide, French novelist, critic (1869-1951)
Don’t play for safety – it’s the most dangerous thing in the world.
Horace Walpole, British author (1717-1797)
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong, US author, poet (b. 1942)
Safe is risky.
Gene Pressman, US clothing retailer
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
Pierre Corneille, French playwright (1606-1684)
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
Alfred North Whitehead, British philosopher, mathematician (1861-1947)
What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?
Robert Schuller, US clergyman, author (b. 1926)
There is always a certain risk in being alive, and if you are more alive there is more risk.
Henrick Ibsen, Norwegian playwright, poet (1828-1906)
If you play safe in life, you’ve decided that you don’t want to grow any more.
Shirley Hufstedler, US lawyer, federal judge (b. 1925)
Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton, British photographer (1904-1980)
There are risks and costs to a programme of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F Kennedy, US President (1917-1963)
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known as Mark Twain, US author (1835-1910)
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
Leslie Townes Hope, known as Bob Hope, British/US comedian (1903-2003)
Role Models
Lives of great men remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, US poet (1807-1882)
Leaders get out in front and stay there by raising the standards by which they judge themselves – and by which they are willing to be judged.
Frederick Smith, British politician (1872-1930)
The core leadership strategy is simple: be a model. Commit yourself to your own personal mastery. Talking about personal mastery may open people’s minds somewhat, but actions always speak louder than words. There’s nothing more powerful you can do to encourage others in their quest for personal mastery than to be serious in your own quest.