Catalyst Quotes

“Dare to Be Yourself / Be What You Might Have Been”

“When people understand how to understand why things work the way they do, then and only then can they create a unique future for themselves and those they have been given the privilege to serve through leadership.  If you don’t assume responsibility for understanding generative learning, the best you will ever be able to achieve is mediocrity – competitive parity.”   (Bret L. Simmons)

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“We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.”     (Max DePree)      

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“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.  Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”   (Joseph Campbell)

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“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.  Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”    (C. G. Jung)

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“As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster.  You have to be whole and complete in yourself.  No one can give you that. You have to know who you are – what others say is irrelevant.”    (Nic Sheff)

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“The highest courage is to dare to be yourself in the face of adversity.  Choosing right over wrong, ethics over convenience, and truth over popularity … these are the choices that measure your life.  Travel the path of integrity without looking back, for there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”   (Successories)

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“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”   (George Eliot)

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“The Solution of My Life Occurred to Me ….”

“I can do anything.  I can be anything.  No one ever told me I couldn’t.  No one ever expressed this idea that I was limited to any one thing, and so I think in terms of what’s possible, not impossible. 

They did sell me on the notion of reality.  That I got.  I got the laws of physics and nature pretty much down and knew early on there were very specific things I couldn’t do.  I knew I could never make anyone float, or turn water into wine, or make cats speak French.  I knew I couldn’t bring people back from the dead.  I got that part of it.  But I also knew that if I was with someone who had lost somebody I might be able to make them feel better.  I couldn’t keep someone’s house from burning down, but I could help them sort through the rubble and get their shit together and start in on another one.  So realized I wasn’t God, which was a slight disappointment, you know.  Just a slight disappointment – and a mild surprise.”  (Whoopi Goldberg)

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“If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”   (Thomas A. Edison)

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“The solution of my life occurred to me one evening while I was ironing a shirt.”   (Alice Munro)

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“Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals.”   (Lydia M. Child)

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“Better not to search for who you are until you decide who it is you want to find.”   (Robert Brault)

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“It is in the moments of decisions that your destiny is shaped.”   (Anthony Robbins)

“Someday the Inner Light Will Shine From Us”

“The stars are the street lights of eternity.”   (Author Unknown)

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“The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.  The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.”   (Felix Adler)

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“Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry, ‘More light.’  Sunlight.  Torchlight.  Candlelight.  Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators.  Big floods for the night games at Soldier’s Field.  Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we’re supposed to be asleep.  Light is more than watts and foot-candles.  Light is metaphor.  Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light.”   (Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider)

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“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”   (Edith Wharton)

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“In this world, darkness is always looming on the horizon.  At Gottfried, instead of avoiding the dark, we meet it head on.

Do the same with your studies and with every obstacle you face in the future. Do not accept the confines of the world as you perceive it.

Instead, look for what you cannot see.  There are universes among us, within us.  Our only way out of darkness is to learn how to see WITHOUT light.”   (Yvonne Woon, Dead Beautiful)

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“Whatever you are physically … male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy — all those things matter less than what your heart contains.  If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.”   (Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel)

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“Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we’ll need no other light.”   (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

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“We are Capable of So Much More”

“It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me.  I had taught myself to do without love.

It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me.  I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him.

What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.  What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.

Now even that had flickered out.

How long I stood frozen there, I cannot say.  If I was ever going to move again, someone else was going to have to furnish the reason for moving.

Somebody did.

A policeman watched me for a while, and then he came over to me, and he said, ‘You alright?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’ve been standing here a long time,” he said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘You waiting for somebody?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Better move on, don’t you think?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

And I moved on.”  (Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night)

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“I think it’s just as likely that someone could say that this place, right here, is heaven, hell and earth all at the same time.  And we still wouldn’t know what to do differently.  Everyone just muddles through, trying not to make too many mistakes.”   (David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle)

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“Sometimes we give up a dream to play a larger role in someone else’s dream.”   (Robert Brault)

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“Most people create a destiny of minutiae, of the mundane.  They create their own limitations. When the moment comes for them to stretch and leap, they find themselves boxed in, locked down by their own fears.”   (Bill Blais, No Good Deed)

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“If you have a belief and you come against an experience which the belief says is not possible, or, the experience is such that you have to drop the belief, what are you going to choose — the belief or the experience?  The tendency of the mind is to choose the belief, to forget about the experience.  That’s how you have been missing many opportunities when God has knocked at your door.”   (Osho)

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“So often we only do what we think is expected of us, when we are capable of so much more.”   (Cynthia Hand, Unearthly)

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“Expect Great Things of Yourself”

“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:

Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old.  Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples’ affairs.  With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it.  But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains — they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn’t agree with that of others.  Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle.  I do not have the ambition to become a saint — it is so hard to live with some of them — but a harsh old person is one of the devil’s masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy.  Let me discover merits where I had not expected them and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any.  And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.  Amen.”   (Margot Benary-Isbert)

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“You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.”   (Michael Jordan)

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“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.  Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.  Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield but to my own strength.  Let me not cave in.”   (Rabindranath Tagore)

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“Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well.  Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.”   (Brian Tracy)

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“Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through.  Face it.”   (Joseph Conrad)

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“And so another week pretending to be a guru, and no one the wiser.”   (Robert Brault)

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“Congratulations! You’re Not Perfect!

“Some people never go crazy.  What truly horrible lives they must lead.”   (Charles Butkowski)

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“Congratulations!  You’re not perfect!  It’s ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway.  But then, everybody’s ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people.  You know what perfect is?  Perfect is not eating or drinking or talking or moving a muscle or making even the teensiest mistake.  Perfect is never doing anything wrong – which means never doing anything at all.  Perfect is boring!  So you’re not perfect!  Wonderful!  Have fun!  Eat things that give you bad breath!  Trip over your own shoelaces!  Laugh!  Let somebody else laugh at you!  Perfect people never do any of those things.  All they do is sit around and sip weak tea and think about how perfect they are.  But they’re really not one-hundred-percent perfect anyway.  You should see them when they get the hiccups!  Phooey!  Who needs ’em?  You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person.  Good people are hard to find nowadays.  And they’re a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.”   (Stephen Manes, Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days!)

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“A Spiritual Samaritan lives knowing that if we were to leave this world tomorrow, we were the best humans we could be and we touched the lives of as many souls as possible.  We are not asked to be perfect.  We are asked to make a difference.”   (Molly Friedenfeld)

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“The most important thing I can add from my own observations is this:  Knowing it started from unremarkable circumstances should be a comfort to us all.  Because it proves that you don’t need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingredients.  You can start with the world you’ve got.”   (‘Pay it Forward’ movie, 2000)

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“It’s not that perfection cannot be achieved.  It’s that it’s so hard to stop there.”   (Robert Brault)

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“The Physics of the Quest / It’s Crazy Not to Believe in Miracles”

“I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call ‘The Physics of the Quest’ — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum.  And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this:  ‘If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself …  then truth will not be withheld from you.’  Or so I’ve come to believe.”    (Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love)

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“No one’s life should be rooted in fear.  We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.”   (Dean Koontz, Life Expectancy)

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“There’s no limit to what you can dream.  You expect the unexpected, you believe in magic, in fairy tales, and in possibilities.  Then you grow older and that innocence is shattered and somewhere along the way the reality of life gets in the way and you’re hit by the realization that you can’t be all you wanted to be, you just might have to settle for a little bit less.”   (Cecelia Ahern)

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“Trusting God completely means having faith that He knows what is best for your life. You expect Him to keep His promises, help you with problems, and do the impossible when necessary.”   (Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life:  What on Earth Am I Here For?)

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“Good things aren’t supposed to just fall into your lap.  God is very generous, but He expects you to do your part first.”   (Audrey Hepburn)

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“It is just crazy not to believe in the miracles you sit around waiting to happen.”   (Robert Brault)

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“Responsibility to Yourself; Expect Great Things to Happen”

“Each of us lives dependent and bound by our individual knowledge and our awareness.  All of that is what we call reality.  However, both, knowledge and awareness are equivocal.  One’s reality might be another’s illusion.  We all live inside our own fantasies.”   (Itachi Uchiha)

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“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel like that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.  We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.  Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.”   (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist)

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“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you … it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger.  It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind.  It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre:  ‘I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.’

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions — predigested books and ideas … marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems.  It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short. … It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work; insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives.  It means, therefore, the courage to be ‘different’… The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference.  Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”   (Adrienne Rich)

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“Maybe who we are isn’t so much about what we do, but rather what we’re capable of when we least expect it.”   (Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper)

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“She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.”  (Zelda Fitzgerald)

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