"If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you."
Natalie Goldberg

"I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying."
Michael Jordan, US basketball player (1963 - )

"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
Seneca, Roman dramatist, philosopher, & politician (5 BC - 65 AD)

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."
Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet (1809 - 1892)

"Man's main task is to give birth to himself."
Erich Fromm, US (German-born) psychologist (1900 - 1980)

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find how you yourself have altered."
Nelson Mandela (1918 - )

"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself."
Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You don't blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the President. You realize that you control your own destiny."
Albert Ellis

"Just living is not enough, said the Butterfly. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower."
Hans Christian Anderson

"There are many methods for predicting the future. For example, you can read horoscopes, tea leaves, tarot cards, or crystal balls. Collectively, these methods are known as "nutty methods." Or you can put well-researched facts into sophisticated computer models, more commonly referred to as "a complete waste of time.""
Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future, US cartoonist (1957 - )

"An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied."
Arnold Glasow

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Protestant theologian & anti-Nazi activist (1906 - 1945)

"Continuous effort is the key to unlocking our potential."
Black Elk, Native American

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
Barack Obama

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off...

They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating."
Pearl Buck, US novelist (1892 - 1973)

"Know thyself."
Thales (635 BC - 543 BC), (The Seven Sages) from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

"The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

"It's compassion that makes gods of us."
Dorothy Gilman

"Outings are so much more fun when we can savor them through the children's eyes."
Lawana Blackwell, The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter, 1998

"To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."
Chinese Proverb

"A man should never be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday."
Alexander Pope, English poet & satirist (1688 - 1744)

"We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible."
Vince Lombardi, US football coach (1913 - 1970)

"Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self."
Millicent Fenwick

"Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners."
Author Unknown

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure."
Mark Twain, Letter to Mrs Foote, Dec. 2, 1887
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910)

"Here's a message to the new borns, waiting to breathe: if you believe then you can achieve. Just look at me, against all odds 'though life is hard, we carry on, livin' in the projects, broke with no lights on. To all the seeds that follow me- protect your essence, born with less, but you still precious."
Tupac Shakur, Smile

"You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head."
Gavin McDonald, Scottish Bicyclist, 04-15-2006

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939

"It is a wise father that knows his own child."
William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice", Act 2 scene 2
Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
Helen Keller (1880 - 1968), The Open Door (1957)