Catalyst Quotes

“Specialize in the Impossible”

“Too often, we’re presented with choices that don’t please us.   We can pick one lousy alternative or the other.   And too often, we pick one.

I was struck by Apple’s choice to put a glass screen on the original iPhone.  Just six weeks before it was announced, Steve Jobs decided he wanted a scratchproof glass screen.   The thing is, this wasn’t an option.   It wasn’t possible, reliable, feasible or appropriately priced.   It couldn’t be done with certainty, and almost any other organization would have taken it off the list of appropriate choices.

It was unreasonable.

And that’s the key.   Remarkable work is always not on the list, because if it was, it would be commonplace, not remarkable.”      (Seth Godin)

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.  Impossible is not a fact.   It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration.   It’s a dare.   Impossible is potential.   Impossible is temporary.   Impossible is nothing.”      (Muhammed Ali)

“What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible.”      (Theodore Roethke)

“Be Happy”

“Be yourself – don’t pretend to be what you’re not in order to avoid criticism.   Be yourself; improve yourself by study and practice and common sense.   But don’t fake it just to keep on the good side of somebody who spends all his time picking apart other people.”     (Mickey Mantle)

“If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got  …  then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.

Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill.   All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill.  The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.

An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but always hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.”      (Seth Godin)

If you do not risk, you cannot grow …

If you do not grow, you cannot be your best …

If you are not your best, you cannot be happy …

If you cannot be happy, what else matters?      (Dr. David Viscott)

“Rekindle”

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.   Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.   The world you desired can be won.    It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.”     (Ayn Rand)

“Here’s to the crazy ones.   The misfits.   The rebels.   The trouble-makers.   The round heads in the square holes.   The ones who see things differently.   They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo.   You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.   But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.   Because they change things.   They push the human race forward.   And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.   Because the people, who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”     (‘Think Different’ advertisement, Apple Computers)

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.   It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.   We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”     (Albert Schweitzer)

Beginning / End of the Day & Every Day

“Beginning of the Day”

“This is the beginning of a new day.   You have been given this day to use as you will.   You can waste it or use it for good.   What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.  When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever; in its place is something that you have left behind … let it be something good.”     (Author Unknown)

“End of the Day”

“Finish every day and be done with it.   You have done what you could.  Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.   Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.  This day is all that is good and fair.   It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.”     (Ralph Waldo Emerson) 

“Every Day”

 “There are only two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything else is.”

(Albert Einstein)

“Unknown Blessings”

“Most people don’t know that there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don’t get too comfortable and fall asleep and miss your life.”    (Brian Andreas)

“We have to steer our true life’s course.  Whatever your calling is in life!  The whole purpose of being here is to figure out what that is as soon as possible, so you go about the business of being on track, of not being owned by what your mother said, what society said, whatever people think (you are) supposed to be …   when you can exceed other people’s expectations and be defined by your own!    (Oprah Winfrey)

“Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.”    (Native American Saying)

“Be Who You Are”

“When we walk to the edge of all the light we have, and take that step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen – there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly.”      (Christian Medical Society Journal, 1985)

“ ‘Be who you are,’ said the duchess to Alice, ‘or, if you would like it put more simply, never try to be what you might have been or could have been other than what you should have been.’ “    (Lewis Carrol)

“The place you are in needs you today.”     (Katharine Logan)