Catalyst Quotes

“Dreaming and Doing”

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

 “If someone says ‘can’t, that shows you what to do.”       (John Cage)

 “You must take personal responsibility.  You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself.”        (Jim Rohn)

 “We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”       (George Bernard Shaw)

“Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, others stay awake and do them.”       (Unknown Source)

“Hear – See – Do”

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”          (Theodore Roosevelt)

“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”       (General Colin Powell)

“It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.  If we treat people as they are, we make them worse.  If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”       (J. W. Goethe)

“You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint paradise, then in you go.”       (Nikos Kazantzakis)

“I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.  I do and I understand.”           (Confucius)

“Alter Your Attitudes, Alter Your Lives”

“My whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers.”       (Tom Stoppard)

“Don’t spend your precious time asking ‘Why isn’t the world a better place?’  It will only be time wasted.  The question to ask is ‘How can I make it better?’  To that there is an answer.”       (Leo Buscaglia)

“The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have.”       (Marcus Buckhingham and Donald O. Clifton, Now Discover Your Strengths)

“Some favorite expressions of small children:

‘It’s not my fault. . . They made me do it. . . I forgot.’ 

Some favorite expressions of adults:

‘It’s not my job. . . No one told me. . . It couldn’t be helped.’

True freedom begins and ends with personal accountability.”       (Dan Zadra)

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitude of mind.”       (William James)

“Show Your Dreams — Live Your Dreams”

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.  We need men (and women) who can dream of things that never were.”       (John F. Kennedy)

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”      (Langston Hughes)

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.”       (Steve Jobs)

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”      (Erma Bombeck)

“Dream as if you’ll live forever.  Live as if you’ll die today.”      (James Dean)

“Create Something to Last Forever”

“A wise old sage hosted a dinner.  Toward the end of the meal, everyone was given fortune cookies and told that they’re holding their future in their hands.  The guests eagerly opened them to read the words of wisdom they contained.  The paper slips inside each cookie were blank.

‘Is this a joke?’ they asked.  ‘Is our fortune so bleak or so full of emptiness?’

‘That’s up to each of you.  The choice is yours,’ the sage replied. ‘Many people are eager to have soothsayers predict their future.  Fewer are willing to take responsibility for writing their own fortune.  Your future is a blank sheet of paper waiting for you to create what is to come.'”       (Jim Clemmer, “When Choosing Our Thoughts We Choose Our Future”)

 “… Just because something worked five years ago doesn’t mean it’s still going to work today.  We can’t get so set in our ways that we won’t try anything new.  Many people today have lost their enthusiasm, or there’s no freshness in their life because every time an opportunity comes for change, for promotion, for increase, they shrink back because they’re not used to it.  They don’t realize that’s what’s keeping them from going to the next level.

One thing I’ve noticed about successful people is that they know how to change with the times.  They don’t get stuck in a rut doing the same thing, the same way, year after year.  They’re constantly evaluating where they are and what they’re doing.  They make adjustments so they can improve…”          (Joel Osteen)

“If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you.  You go to work on your plan; your plan will go to work on you.  Whatever good things we build, end up building us.”      (Jim Rohn)

“Remember that you are needed.  There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it.”        (Charles L. Allen)

“What if you created something that would last forever?”        (Richard LeFauve)

“Lessons That Serve Our Soul’s Growth”

“I haven’t done nearly as much as I wanted to do or as I could do.  I do not believe anybody really ever achieves their maximum.  The average person only uses about 25% of his potential.  Now that is awful.  We’ve all got more potential probably than we ever use, but the people who really do something with their life are not doing it for recognition and to be acclaimed.  You do it because it’s God working in you.”       (Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, ‘The Joy of Positive Living’)

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird; it would be harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad.”       (C. S. Lewis)

“To look is one thing,

To see what you look at is another,

To understand what you see is a third,

The learn from what you understand is still something else,

But to act on what you learn is all that really matters.”      (Anonymous)

“There was an older guy who decided to jog around the local high school football field.  As he huffed and puffed along, the team was practicing.

The players soon started running sprints up and down the field.  The man told himself, ‘I’ll just keep running until they quit.’  So he ran, and they ran, and he ran some more, and they kept running.  The old man kept running until he could finally run no longer.

He stopped in exhaustion.  One of the players, equally exhausted, approached him and said, ‘Boy, am I glad you finally stopped, Mister.  Coach told us we had to keep running wind sprints as long as the old guy was jogging.’

He was watching them; they were watching him.  He was letting them set his standard; they allowed him to set theirs.”      (Steve Goodier)

“As someone who has faced as much disappointment as most people, I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way.  I trust that the challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul’s growth.”      (Marianne Williamson)

“Create the Future – The Impossible Dream”

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

“What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?”          (Robert H. Schuller)

“To dream … the impossible dream
To fight … the unbeatable foe
To bear … with unbearable sorrow
To run … where the brave dare not go
To right … the unrightable wrong
To love … pure and chaste from afar
To try … when your arms are too weary
To reach … the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right, without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm,
when I’m laid to my rest …
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach … the unreachable star!               (‘The Impossible Dream’ lyrics written by Joe Darion)