Catalyst Quotes

Compiled by Alex Pena ~ ‘Catalyst’: “to spark, to ignite, energize, mobilize; something that accelerates a reaction (DDI)." Thought-provoking & motivational quotes and stories for you to read, reflect on and move forward in making creative and positive changes in your life.

Archive for the category “Inspiration”

“Life is Funny; Laugh Like Hell”

 

“If you want an interesting party sometime, combine a few cocktails and a box of crayons.”    (Robert Fulghum)

 

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“Three life rules guaranteed to bring you peace in life.
1.   Keep your mouth shut.
2.   Keep your big mouth shut.
3.   Keep your stupid big mouth shut.”    (Peter Weisz, The Universal Mind)

 

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“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”    (Mae West)

 

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“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.   Then quit.   No use being a damn fool about it.”    (W. C. Fields)

 

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“If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?”    (George Carlin)

 

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“A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called “The Road Less Traveled”, describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used.  The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn’t hear him as he cried for help.  Sure enough, that poet is dead.”    (Lemony Snicket, The Slippery Slope)

 

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“When I think of loyalty of pets, I think of Adam and Eve leaving paradise, followed by their dog.”    (Robert Brault, Reflections)

 

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“From a diary:  ‘Turning 80 this year – a first-ever for me.  Will be new at it and will doubtless make beginner mistakes.  But looking forward to the opportunity.’”    (Robert Brault, Reflections)

 

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“If you can’t do anything about it, laugh like hell.”    (David Cook)

 

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“It Comes Down to People. Believe in Them.”

 

“Once we rid ourselves of traditional thinking, we can get on with creating the future.”    (James Bertrand)

 

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“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.”    (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

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“If you wish others to believe in you, you must convince them that you believe in them.”    (Harvey McKay)

 

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“The deepest principle of human nature is a craving to be appreciated.”    (William James)

 

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“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.”    (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

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“They call it coaching, but it is teaching.  You do not just tell them … you show them the reasons.”    (Vince Lombardi)

 

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“Everything in business comes down to PEOPLE.  Where in business can we escape the impact of human care, human creativity, human commitment, human frustration, and human despair?  There is no reason for anything in business to exist if it does not serve the needs of people.”    (Bruce Cryer)

 

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Short Course in Leadership:

1. Make a list of things done to you that you abhorred.  Don’t do them to others, ever.
2. Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.”    (Dee Hock)

 

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“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”    (Peter Drucker)

 

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“Let’s make a dent in the universe.”    (Steve Jobs)

 

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“Who Will Stop Me?”

 

 

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”    (Aristotle)

 

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“The Voice
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
‘I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you — just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.’”    (Shel Silverstein)

 

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“There is no coincidence, and nothing happens ‘by accident.’  Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are.  All that is required is to know this.  For you are the creator of your own reality, and life can show up in no other way for you than the way in which you think it will.”   (Conversations with God, An Uncommon Dialogue by Neal Walsch)

 

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“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.  In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”   (Maya Angelou)

 

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“You have power over your mind – not outside events.
Realize this, and you will find strength.”   (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

 

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“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”   (Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera)

 

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“Trust yourself.   You know more than you think you do.”   (Benjamin Spock)

 

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“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”
[Roark] “That’s not the point.  The point is, who will stop me?”   (Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead)

 

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“One Day or Day One. You Decide.”

 

“The true hero is flawed.  The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles – preferably of his own making – in order to triumph.”     (Garth Stein)

 

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“Wisdom backed by courage makes greatness.  Because they are immortal, they immortalize.  Each person is as great as his or her mind, and to the ones who knows, everything that is possible.  A person without knowledge is a world in darkness. Understanding and will are the eyes and the hands, without courage, the mind is dead.”    (Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom)

 

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“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”     (Thomas Merton)

 

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“’Be yourself, everyone else is taken.’

I don’t agree with Oscar Wilde on this one.
In fact, almost no one else is taken.  You definitely can’t (and shouldn’t) be someone who already exists, but the number of slots left is infinite.
Each of us can work to become the person we seek to be.  A better version of the person we are right now.
Doing work we’re proud of for people we care about.”    (Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog, November 18, 2018)

 

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“I want to continue being crazy;
Living my life, the way I dream it,
And not the way the other people want it to be.”     (Paulo Coelho)

 

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“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”    (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist)

 

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“One day or day one.   You decide.”     (Paulo Coelho)

 

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“Be Great in Little Things”

 

“In the end, your life is only a dash between two dates on a tombstone.

What’s your dash gonna be?”    (Chris W. Werner)

 

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“We are what we believe we are.”     (C.S. Lewis)

 

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“When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.” (Tom Robbins)

 

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“People do not decide to become extraordinary.  They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”     (Edmund Hillary)

 

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“The trick is in what one emphasizes.  We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong.  The amount of work is the same.”     (Carlos Castaneda)

 

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“I keep wondering, how many people do you need to be, before you can become yourself.”     (Iain S. Thomas)

 

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“Be great in little things, and you will be given opportunity to do big things.” (Richard Shivers)

 

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“I can’t believe God put us on this earth to be ordinary.”     (Lou Holtz)

 

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“Be great in little things.”     (St. Francis Xavier)

 

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“The Future Starts Today / Autograph Your Work”

 

“Leadership is not magnetic personality – that can just as well be a glib tongue.  It is not making friends and influencing people – that is flattery.  Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.  (Peter Drucker)

 

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“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision.  You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”    (Theodore M. Hesburgh)

 

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There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; it’s what we do with them that’s important.”    (Ruth Ross)

 

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“What we think or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence.  The only thing of consequence is what we do.”    (John Ruskin)

 

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“Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it.  Autograph your work with excellence.”    (Unknown)

 

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“If you can dream it, you can do it.”    (Walt Disney)

 

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“I didn’t get where I am by thinking about it or dreaming about it.  I got there by doing it.”    (Estée Lauder)

 

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“The future starts today, not tomorrow.”    (Pope John Paul II)

 

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“Leadership / Be Afraid and Do It Anyway”

 

“A monumental question for leaders in any organization to consider is:  How much greatness are we willing to grant people?”     (The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander)

 

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“Leaders focus on the soft stuff. People.  Values.  Character.  Commitment.  A Cause.
All of the stuff that was supposed to be too ‘goo-goo’ to count in business.  Yet, it’s the stuff that real leaders take care of first.  And forever.
That’s why leadership is an art, not a science.  If leadership were just about hitting your numbers, about driving the troops to meet their quotas, then leadership would just be a math problem.  But leadership is a human mystery.”    (Tom Peters)

 

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“The most effective way to teach anyone what we would like them to know is through behavior, not words. …  People of action, those who make a difference in life, those whom we most admire, all seem to know the truth of the ancient wisdom (of Emerson),  ‘What you do speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you say.’

Be a doer.  And in the process, you will do more to teach others ….”    (Wayne W. Dyer, Wisdom of the Ages)

 

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We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”    (e. e. cummings)

 

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Zig Ziglar used to tell a story about a baseball team on a losing streak.  On the road for a doubleheader, the team visited a town that was home to a famous faith healer. While the guys were warming up, the manager disappeared.  He came back an hour later with a big handful of bats.  ‘Guys, these bats were blessed and healed by the guru.  Our problems are over.’

According to the story, the team snapped out of their streak and won a bunch of games.  Some people wonder, ‘Did the faith healer really touch the bats, or was the manager making it up?’  Huh?   Does it matter?     (Seth Godin)

 

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We all have possibilities we don’t know about.  We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.”    (Dale Carnegie)

 

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“Trust yourself.   You know more than you think you do.”    (Dr. Spock)

 

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“Be afraid and do it anyway.”    (Rachel Muir)

 

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“Do It Again”

 

“Each of us is born brilliant. Then we spend the rest of our lives having our brilliance buried by people, circumstances, and experiences.  Eventually, we forget that we ever had genius and special talents, and our brilliance is locked away in a vault deep within.  So, we settle for who we are, instead of striving for who we were meant to be.”    (Simon T. Bailey)

 

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“Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.”    (Stephen Covey)

 

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“The wrong bus.   Your first mistake was getting on the A53 bus, the one that goes crosstown instead of to where you’re going.
Mistakes like this happen all the time.
The big mistake, though, the one that will cost you, is staying on that bus.
I know it wasn’t easy to get on the bus.  I know you got a seat.  I know it’s getting dark outside.
But you’re on the wrong bus and staying on the wrong bus won’t make it the right bus.
If you really want to get where you set out to go, you’re going to have to get off the wrong bus.”    (Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog, 8.5.18)

 

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“Planning is helpful.  If you don’t know what you want, you’ll seldom get it. But, no matter how well you plan, you will fare better if you expect the unexpected.  The unexpected, by nature, comes unseen, unthought, un-envisioned.  All you can do is plan to go unplanned, prepare to be unprepared, make going with the flow part of your agenda, for the most successful among us envision, plan, and prepare, but cast all aside as needed, while those who are unable to go with the flow often suffer, if they survive.”    (David W. Jones, Moses and Mickey Mouse: How to Find Holy Ground in the magic Kingdom and Other Unusual Places)

 

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“Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.”    (Bob Dylan)

 

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“Do it again.
Play it again.  Sing it again.  Read it again.  Write it again.  Sketch it again.  Rehearse it again.  Run it again.  Try it again.
Because again is practice, and practice is improvement, and improvement only leads to perfection.”    (Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway)

 

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“Today is Your Lucky Day”

 

“Don’t let other people tell you what you want.”     (Pat Riley)

 

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“Be a light, not a judge, be a model, not a critic. Be a part of the solution, not the problem.
Little by little, your circle of influence will explode, and you will avoid the emotional metastasizing cancers of complaining, criticizing, competing, comparing and cynicism, all which reflect victimization, all of which are the opposite of being proactive.”     (Stephen Covey)

 

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“In a space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose.  Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings.  We may have limited choices, but we can always choose.  We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles.  It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.”     (Stephen Covey)

 

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“Forget mistakes.  Forget failures.  Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.  Today is your lucky day.”     (Will Durant)

 

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“I’ve learned so much from my mistakes …
I’m thinking of making a few more.”    (Unknown Author)

 

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“For the next seven days, I challenge you not to complain at all.”     (T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind)

 

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“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”     (Reinhold Niebuhr)

 

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“You Are the Truth” / “Dare to Dream”

 

 

“Change your thoughts and your change the world.”    (Norman Vincent Peale)

 

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“Mind is the master power that molds and makes
And Man is Mind and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought and, shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking glass.”    (James Allen)

 

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“Our thoughts are the most powerful tools we’ve got.

I think; therefore, I can create awesomeness.  Or horrendousness.  But the bottom line is that it’s through our thoughts that we create our realities.”    (Jen Sincero, You are a Badass, How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life)

 

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“We must dare to dream great dreams – and then we must dare to put them into action.”    (Peter MacDonald)

 

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“Listening to your heart, finding out who you are, is not simple.  It takes time for the chatter to quiet down.  In the silence of ‘not doing’ we begin to know what we feel.  If we listen and hear what is being offered, then anything in life can be our guide.   Listen.”    (Unknown Author)

 

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“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’  Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there.  These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box.  It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good or how bad am I?’ That’s where courage comes in.”    (Erma Bombeck)

 

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“What a wonderful life I’ve had!
I only wish I’d realized it sooner.”    (Colette)

 

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“You are the truth from foot to brow.
Now what else would you like to know?”    (Rumi)

 

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