Catalyst Quotes

“We Need You to Make a Ruckus”

“It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, “Always do what you are afraid to do.”      (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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“To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: “Leave no stone unturned.”     (Edward Bulwer Lytton)

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“All boats leak.

There’s always a defect, always a slow drip, somewhere.  Every plan, every organization, every venture has a glitch.

The question isn’t, ‘is this perfect?’  The question is, ‘will this get me there?’

Sometimes we make the mistake of ignoring the big leaks, the ones that threaten our journey.

More often, though, we’re so busy fixing tiny leaks that we get distracted from the real goal, which is to go somewhere.”     (Seth Godin)

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“The game of life is a game of boomerangs.  Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.”    (Florence Scovel Shinn)

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“As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before.  Please stop sitting around.  We need you to make a ruckus.”  (Seth Godin, Linchpin:  Are You Indispensable?) 

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“The Mind Can Achieve”

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost.”  That is where they should be.  Now put the foundation under them.”     (Henry David Thoreau)

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“Take the first step in faith.  You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”     (Martin Luther King)

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“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”     (Charles F. Kettering)

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”     (Lao Tzu)

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“You can be anything you want to be, if you only believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”     (Napoleon Hill)

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“The pressure is on for people to perform at their best, so there has never been a greater need for effective coaching.  Everybody’s a coach in some aspect of life.  Regardless of whether you have an official title, there are people out there who need your help.”     (Ken Blanchard)

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

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“I Want to Gain in Strength”

“I do believe in simplicity.  It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit.  When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms.  So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.  Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.”  (Henry David Thoreau)

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“One of the most troublesome things in life is that what you do or do not want has very little to do with what does or does not happen.”   (Lemony Snicket)

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“But that was life:  Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park.  You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for … or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place.”     (J. R. Ward, Crave)   

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“So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons.  And maybe we’ll never know most of them.  But even if we don’t have the answer to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.  We can still do things.  And we can try to feel okay about them.”    (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky)

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“Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.”     (Kahil Gibran)

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“I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard.  I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more.”     (Anaïs Nin)

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“Living”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”     (Eleanor Roosevelt)

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“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”     (e. e. cummings)

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“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”    (Plato)

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“Life is too important to be taken seriously.”     (Oscar Wilde)

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“From three to four, he planned to stand perfectly still and think of what it was like to be alive.”     (Wilbur the Pig, Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White)

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“May you live all the days of your life.”     (Jonathan Swift)

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“I Expect Miracles”

“The only limits to the possibilities in your life tomorrow are the buts you use today.”     (Les Brown)

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“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.”     (Bob Marley)

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“The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next.  The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing. ”     (Michael E. Gerber)

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“Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.”     (Dale Carnegie)

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“Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams.  Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.  Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.”     (Pope John XXIII)

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“I am realistic – I expect miracles.”     (Wayne Dyer)

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“Beliefs Have Power”

“There are in fact four very different stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth … the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.”     (Roger Bacon)

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“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”     (Marian Wright Edelman)

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“The worst thing that one can do is not try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized and never knowing.”     (David Viscott)

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“All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.”    (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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“Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others.  But the creator is the man who disagrees.  Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current.  But the creator is the man who goes against the current.  Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together.  But the creator is the man who stands alone.”     (Ayn Rand)

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“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy.  Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”       (Anthony Robbins)

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“Make the Most of It”

“The world is perfect.  It’s a mess.  It has always been a mess.  We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.”    (Joseph Campbell)

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“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?  This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.”   (Thomas Merton)

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“Once you have started seeing the beauty of life, ugliness starts disappearing.  If you start looking at life with joy, sadness starts disappearing.  You cannot have heaven and hell together, you can have only one.  It is your choice.”     (Osho)

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“The next time you feel lonely, disconnected or unappreciated, consider that unlike many other maladies, this one hits everyone.  And unlike other challenges, this one is easily overcome by realizing that you can cure the problem by connecting, appreciating and leading.

The minute we realize that the person sitting next to us needs us (and our tribe, our forward motion and the value we create), we’re able to extinguish their aloneness as well as ours.

When you shine a light, both of you can see better.”      (Seth Godin)

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“When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want?  Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame?  Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car?  Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement?  Of course not.  What will matter then will be people.  If relationships will matter most then, shouldn’t they matter most now?”    (Max Lucado)

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“This bright, new day … complete with 24 hours of opportunities, choices, and attitudes … a perfectly matched set of 1440 minutes.  This unique gift, this one day, cannot be exchanged, replaced or refunded. Handle with care.  Make the most of it.  There is only one to a customer.”     (Author Unknown)

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