Dear Hope Nation,
Ever since I was in the Army, I’ve loved books of quotations. While some quotes are mere cocktail peanuts—pleasant enough but not hunger-satisfying—others are like Willie Wonka’s Magic Chewing Gum that contains a three-course meal. (Unlike Wonka’s gum, though, I’ve never heard of a quote turning an Oompa Loompa (or Violet Beauregard) into a giant blueberry). As Winston Churchill said, “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.” I agree, and here are some of my favorites in no particular order.
“There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change in my viewpoint.” – Denis Diderot
“Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.” – Dean Acheson
“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
“It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” – Tao Te Ching
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” – Albert Einstein
“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.” – Abraham Maslow
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.” – Henry Ward Beecher
“Recognizing that you are not where you want to be is a starting point to begin changing your life.” – Deborah Day
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” – Steve Maraboli
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you…never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.” – William Thackeray
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard
“It is never too late to be who you might have been.” – George Eliot
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” – Malala Yousafzai
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experiences that reveals the human spirit.” – E.E. Cummings
“There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.” – William Hague
“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” – Confucius
“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” – Rick Warren
“If you don’t make the time to work on creating the life you want, you’re eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don’t want.” – Kevin Ngo
“The tragedy in life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.” – Benjamin Mays
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.” – John Muir
“When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” – Karen E. Quinones Miller
“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.” – Les Brown
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
Enjoy this day. It’s the only day you’ve got.
You matter. I matter. We matter.
Keith