Catalyst Quotes

“Failure – Good News and Bad News; I’m Possible”

“You are a fortunate person, indeed, if you can begin each day accepting the fact that during that day there will be ups and downs, good breaks and bad ones, disappointments, surprises, unexpected turns of events.”     (Roy Benjamin)

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“Many people think that failure is something to be avoided at all costs. There is good news and bad news to report on that. The good news is that failure can be avoided – by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing. The bad news is that to achieve anything, you must accept risk, which brings with it the possibility for disappointment and failure.

If you have never experienced failure, you have never pushed the envelope or stretched hard enough and long enough to reach your maximum potential. You can never steal second base if you keep both feet on first. You will never experience the exhilaration of discovery without enduring the pain of an experimental dead-end.

Winston Churchill defined success as “going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Failure may be an event in your life, but it is not who you are.     Failure is an opportunity to learn. “   (“Learning from Your Mistakes,” Delos Cosgrove)

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“Obstacles are necessary for success because … victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.”    (Og Mandino)

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“Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”     (George Smith Patton, Jr.)

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“Nothing is impossible; the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”     (Audrey Hepburn)

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“Climb Over the Wall; Losing is Winning”

“There’s a place some of us like to hang out; I call it the near side of the wall.  It’s the comfortable place where, instead of pushing our limits to more intense feeling, greater love, and larger life, we remain content with half best, with mediocrities in every area, with things that fill our days but not our souls.

Playing on the near side of the wall is at best a timid and at worst a cowardly position.  It ensures that our lives will be safe and small.

Being willing to climb over the wall, to scale it in spite of possible bruised hands and scraped knees, is like being willing to see if the baseball you threw over it ended up on a black-asphalt pavement or in a field of wild orange poppies.”      (365 Days of Love, Daphne Rose Kingma, Conari Press)

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“It’s not what you are that holds you back, it’s what you think you are not.”      (Denis Waitley)

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“What I am looking for is not out there … it’s in me.”      (Helen Keller)

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“That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games.  Losing, in a curious way, is winning.”      (Richard Bach)

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“Fragile or Tough?”

“It occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are.  There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble balls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean.  Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way.  Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.”   (Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman)

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“There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected with the desire to become somebody.  Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be – musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, gardeners, inventors – but somebody:  to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring, not quiet and self-fulfillment, but self-glorification and self-expansion.”       (Tony deMello SJ)

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“The first step in handling anything is gaining the ability to face it.”     (L. Ron Hubbard)

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“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”      (Tony Robbins)

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“The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.”    (Brian Tracy)

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“Life – Hope – Dreams – Goals – Commitment”

“Adventure isn’t hanging on a rope off the side of a mountain.  Adventure is an attitude that we must apply to the day-to-day obstacles of life – facing new challenges, seizing new opportunities, testing our resources against the unknown and in the process, discovering our own unique potential.”     (John Amatt)

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“Where there is life, there is hope.  Where there are hopes, there are dreams.  Where there are vivid dreams repeated, they become goals.  Goals become the action plans and game plans that winners dwell on in intricate detail, knowing that achievement is almost automatic when the goal becomes an inner commitment.  The response to the challenges of life — purpose — is the healing balm that enables each of us to face up to adversity and strife.”  (Denis Waitley)

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“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”    (Truman Capote)

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“People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”  (Apple Computers)

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“Remember how far you’ve come, not just how far you have to go.  You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.”     (Rick Warren)

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“Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.”      (Stephen Covey)

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“Build Something Far Bigger Than Yourself”

“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass…  It’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”     (Vivian Greene)

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“One of the most amazing things that can happen is finding someone who sees everything you are and won’t let you be anything less.  They see the potential of you.  They see endless possibilities.  And through their eyes, you start to see yourself the same way as someone who matters.  As someone who can make a difference in the world. “     (So Much Closer, Susane Colosanti)

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“Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”     (Napoleon Hill)

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“Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.”    (Ron Wild)

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“You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.”     (Seth Godin)

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“Life After or Before Death?”

“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 Neale Donald Walsch)

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“If you want guarantees in life, then you don’t want life.  You want rehearsals for a script that’s already been written.  Life by its nature cannot have guarantees, or its whole purpose is thwarted.”   (Conversations with God:  An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch)

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“Life is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated …”       (Confucius)

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“The question shouldn’t be is there life after death but is there life before death.”       (Osho)

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“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”    (Somerset Maugham)

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“Leadership – Change, Challenges and Being a Servant”

“In a time when change is the only constant, a leader’s self-concept can’t remain fixed.”    (Paul Wieand, Founder – Center for Advance Emotional Intelligence) 

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“Challenge is the opportunity for greatness.  People do their best when there’s the chance to change the ways things are.  Maintaining the status quo breeds mediocrity.  Leaders seek and accept challenging opportunities to test their abilities.  They motivate others to exceed their limits.  They look for innovative ways to improve the organization.  Leaders do their best when there is a tough assignment or quest for change.”    (Kouses & Posner, The Leadership Challenge)

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“The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.”     (Derek Sivers)

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“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.”     (Max De Pree)    

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”     (Maya Angelou)

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“Imagination and Leadership – Out of Focus?

“When there is no vision, people perish.”    (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

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 “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”    (Mark Twain)

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“Imagination is the beginning of creation.  You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”     (George Bernard Shaw)

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“While interviewing the legendary Jack Nicklaus, a reporter once remarked, ‘Jack, you have had a spectacular career.  Your name is synonymous with the game of golf.  You really know your way around the course.  What is your secret?’  Nicklaus replied, ‘The holes are numbered!’

If only leadership were so easy. … A key part of our continuous leadership quest is finding the approaches that fit our individual values, personality, and style. … Leadership is really just common sense.  The problem for most of us is that it’s not common practice.  It is one thing to know, it’s quite another to do.  And many a manager has confused understanding leadership concepts with practicing them.  Just like maintaining our physical fitness, growing our leadership is a never-ending activity.”        (Jim Clemmer, “The Leader’s Digest)

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