Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• "Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs." - Malcolm S. Forbes


• "I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow." - Woodrow T. Wilson


• "I used to think my brain was my most important organ. But then I though: Wait a minute, who's telling me that?" - Emo Phillips


• "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." - E.B. White


• "Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.” - George Carlin


• "What kind of god would it be who only pushed the world from the outside?" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• "Do no evilness because it is a small one; do not leave a small deed undone because it is just a petty one." - Liu Bei
• “First organize the inner, then organize the outer ... First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, then organize others." - Zhuge Liang
• Life is finite, While knowledge is infinite. - Zhuang Zi
• “Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching.” - Mao Zedong
• “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.” - Laozi
• “When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.” - Confucius

Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• "Life is all about balancing not about being balanced…Embrace the wobble.” - Patricia Ryan Madson
• "More of me comes out when I improvise." - Edward Hopper
• “Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” - Winston Churchill
• “From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.” - Arthur Conan Doyle
• “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - J.K. Rowling
• “It’s taken me all my life to learn what not to play.” - Dizzy Gillespie

Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• "The person who knows how will always have a job. The person who knows why will always be his boss." - Diane Ravitch
• "Only the mediocre are always at their best." - Jean Giraudoux
• "Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict." - William Ellery Channing
• "Respect a man, he will do the more." - James Howell
• "Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win." - Jonathan Kozol
• "Don't just think better, think different." - Harry Beckwith

4qtr2007 - Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• “Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.” - Alan Alda
• “The life of my personal has nothing to do with me,” - Claire Danes
• “I Eats All Me Spinach, And Takes To The Finish, I'm Popeye The Sailor Man! Toot! Toot!” – Popeye, the Sailorman
• “He's very comfortable in his own skin, ... That's his personality. When you're true to self like that, it comes across well.” - Jeff Van Gundy
• “Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.” – Pablo Picasso
• “We've been dreaming in color since 1883.” – Benjamin Moore, the Paint-man

4qtr2007 - GottaGettaBlog! Highlights

I've been using GottaGettaBlog! as a vehicle to capture news, notes, and musings about coaching, mentoring, and getting more from YOUR Untapped Potential - along with whatever other stuff I happen to find amusing and/or thought-provoking - since June of 2003.Highlighted postings from last quarter are listed below - just follow the links:

from July 2007

• Handling Your Mistakes
• Networking Nmemonic
• Goals, Priorities, Procrastination, and Deadlines

from August 2007

• Check Email More Regularly
• Getting a SLANT on Doing Better

from September 2007

• Creative Listening, redux
• What Goes Around, Comes Around
• Friday Afternoon, Idealized

Your on-line comments at GottaGettaBlog! are both welcomed and encouraged. To receive weekly digests of new GottaGettaBlog! postings, update your subscription here.

3qtr2007 - Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say (First)

• "Remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it." - Henry Ford
• "Life is "trying things to see if they work." - Ray Bradbury
• "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." - Erich Fromm
• "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein
• "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan
• "Our genius ain't appreciated around here... let's scram!" - Moe (to Larry and Curley)

2qtr2007 - Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say First!

• George Konrad: Courage is an accumulation of small steps.
• Susan Taylor: Use missteps as stepping stones to deeper understanding and greater achievement.
• Jimmy Buffett: Indecision may or may not be my problem.
• Francois Gautier: More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.
• G. W. F. Hegel: Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.
• William James: The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

1qtr2007 - Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say First!

• Chrisopher Morley: “No man is lonely eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention.”
• Edmund Burke: “Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
• Dennis Miller: “You've got bad eating habits if you use a grocery cart in 7-Eleven okay?”
• Miss Piggy: "Never eat more than you can lift."
• William Blake: “Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
• Ellen Goodman: "Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience - unless they are still up."
• Baltasar Gracian: "It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward. "
• Charles M. Schultz: "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

4qtr2006 - Notable Quotables: Great Things I Didn't Say First!

• “We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy. ” - Cyril Connolly
• “What can this piece of paper do; imagine?” - Alamgir Hashmi
• “Oh, how powerfully the magnet of illusion attracts.” - Gutzkow
• “One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us.” - Carl Sagan
• “Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.” - Jim Murray
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” - Albert Einstein

3qtr2006 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "The test of a first-class mind is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the head at the same time and still be able to function." - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• "In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." - Albert Schweitzer
• “When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.” - Edgar Watson Howe
• “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing” - Aristotle
• "The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose." - E.M. Gray
• "If you want the rainbow, you've got to put up with the rain." - Jimmy Durante

2qtr2006 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "It is a bad plan that admits of no modification." - Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)
• "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood...Make big plans, aim high in hope and work." - Daniel H. Burnham (1846 - 1912)
• "How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees." - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
• "We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart." - Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)
• "There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow." - Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)
• "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again. Then give up. There's no use being a damned fool about it." - W. C. Fields (1880-1946)

1qtr2006 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first." - David H. Comins
• "Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
• "One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." - Elbert Hubbard
• "A man of words and not of deeds s like a garden full of weeds." - Mother Goose
• "My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition." - Indira Gandhi
• "Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there." - Josh Billings

4qtr2005 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "I always view problems as opportunities in work clothes." - Henry Kaiser
• "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• "Before trouble comes, obtain advice; after it comes, advice is useless." - Ibn Zabara
• "To be without stress entirely is to be dead." - Hans Selye, M.D.
• "It is only when you are pursued that you become swift." - Kahil Gibran
• "Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again." - Goethe

3qtr2005 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "It's never too late to be who you might have been." - George Eliot
• "A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
• "Worry is a misuse of the imagination." - Dan Zadra
• "Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then just eat one of the pieces." - Judith Viorst
• "Only the mediocre are always at their best." - Jean Giraudoux
• "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Plato
• “I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change…I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….” - Erica Jong

2qtr2005 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible." - Frank Zappa
• "Too many people think they are wonderful in business because they talk well. They don't realize that being wonderful in business means "listening well." - Peter Drucker
• "What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin
• "Like a ten-speed bike, most of us have gears we do not use." - Charles Schulz
• "Things turn out the best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." - John Wooden
• "Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there." - Josh Billings

1qtr2005 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that you too can become great." - Mark Twain
• "There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment." - Norman Vincent Peale
• "You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do." - Jerry Garcia
• "Failure does not count. If you accept this, you'll be successful. What causes most people to fail is that after one failure, they'll stop trying." - Frank Burford
• "The way to be nothing is to do nothing." - Nathaniel Howe
• "Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some to be chewed and digested." - Francis Bacon

4qtr2004 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "He that is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else." - Benjamin Franklin
• "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford
• "We are wiser than we know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• "Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out of it." - W.C. Handy
• "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." - May Smith
• "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." - James Russell Lowell

3qtr2004 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." - Joseph Addison
• Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world." - Eleanor Roosevelt
• "Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - John Watson
• "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." - Vernon Saunders Law
• "A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." - Bernard Meltzer
• "A long dispute means both parties are wrong." - Voltaire

2qtr2004 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Keep cool. Anger is not an argument." - Daniel Webster
• "It's not whether you get knocked down. It's whether you get up." - Vince Lombardi
• "You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do." - Henry Ford
• "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas A. Edison
• At first, dreams seem impossible, then improbable, and eventually inevitable. - Christopher Reeve
• "If you're going to do good work, the work has to scare you." - Andre Previn

1atr2004 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started." - David Allen
• "Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light." - Jennie Jerome Churchill
• "We all carry around someone else who's bursting to get out of us." - Angus Young
• "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." - Maya Angelou
• "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." - Jack London
• "As a final incentive before giving up a difficult task, try to imagine it successfully accomplished by someone you violently dislike." - K. Zenios

4qtr2003 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "The fearless are merely fearless. People who act in spite of their fear are truly brave." - James A. LaFond-Lewis
• "There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects is." - Edith Wharton
• "You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." - Mary Pickford
• "Real development is not leaving things behind, as a on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root." - G.K. Chesterton
• "Having a good time is the most neglected aspect of good health." - Julia Child
• "If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead." - Gelett Burgess
• "I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention." - Diane Sawyer

3qtr2003 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
• "The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine." - Mike Murdock
• "We cannot become what we need to be, remaining what we are." - Max Depree
• "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
• "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." - John Wooden
• "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." - Linus Pauling
• "If fate throws a knife at you, there are two ways of catching it - by the blade, or by the handle." - Oriental Proverb

2qtr2003 - Great Things I Didn't Say!

• "Buddha left a road map. Jesus left a road map. Krishna left a road map. Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself." - Stephen Levine
• "Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before." - Jacob A. Riis
• "Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." - William James
• "Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light." - Joseph Pulitzer
• "The finest eloquence is that which gets things done." - David Lloyd George