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"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and
character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."
- General
H. Norman Schwarzkopf
"The leader for today and the future will be focused on how to be –
how to develop quality, character, mind-set, values, principles and courage."
- Frances
Hesselbein
"It is a poor and disgraceful thing not
to be able to reply, with some degree of certainty, to the simple questions,
'What will you be? What will you do?' "
- John Foster
"Every human being is intended to have a
character of his own; to be what no other one is, and to do what no other
can do."
- Channing
"The most difficult thing in life is to
know yourself."
- Thales
"You need to claim the events of
your life to make yourself yours."
- Anne-Wilson Schaef
"Undoubtedly, we become what we
envisage."
- Claude M. Bristol
"What you have outside you counts
less than what you have inside you."
- B. C. Forbes
"He who floats with the current, who does
not guide himself according to higher principles, who has no ideal, no
convictions – such a man is a mere article of the world's furniture – a
thing moved, instead of a living and moving being – an echo, not a voice."
- Amiel
"Every human being is intended to have a
character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can
do."
- Channing
"Every individual has a place to
fill in the world, and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to
be so or not."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Wealth is not only what you have
but it is also what you are."
- A. H. K. Boyd
"The most difficult thing in life is
to know yourself."
- Thales
"Purpose is the most essential core
of leadership. Without purpose there is no mission, vision, or reason
for being."
- Tom Votel
"One need ask only 'What for?
What am I to unify my being for?' The reply is: Not for my own sake."
- Martin Buber
"Ninety percent of the world's woes
come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties,
and even their real virtues. Most of us go all the way through life as
complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?"
- Sydney J. Harris
"Great minds have purposes, others
have wishes."
- Washington Irving
"I now know myself to be a person of
weakness and strength, liability and giftedness, darkness and light. I now
know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it."
- Parker Palmer
"The ancient human question 'Who am I?'
leads inevitably to the equally important question 'Whose am I?' — for there
is no self outside of relationship."
- Parker Palmer
"An effective human being is a whole
greater than the sum of it's parts."
- Ida P. Rolf
"If you don't know where you are going,
you will probably end up somewhere else."
- Laurence J. Peter
"Give us a clear vision, that we may know
where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for
something, we will fall for anything."
- Peter Marshall
"We ought to think that we are one of the
leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the
others, without the tree."
- Pablo Casals
"One must know oneself. If it does not
serve to discover the truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there
is nothing better."
- Blaise Pascal
"We can only thrive when we have a goal -
a passionate purpose which bears upon the public interest."
- Margaret E. Kuhn
"All people should strive to learn before
they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
- James Thurber
"Nature never repeats
herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in
another."
- Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
"I have often thought that the best
way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental
or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself deeply
and intensively active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside
which speaks and says, "This is the real me."
- William James
"Since you are like no other ever
created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable."
- Brenda Ueland
"Learn to get in touch with the
silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a
purpose."
- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
"The noblest of all studies is the
study of what man should be and of what life he should live."
- Plato
"To discover we have no story is to
acknowledge that our existence is meaningless, which we may find
unbearable."
- Robert Fulford
(in Triumph of the Narrative)
"You never find yourself until you
face the truth."
- Pearl Bailey
"Make yourself the sort of person
you want people to think you are."
- Socrates
"Be what you is, not what you is
not."
- The Wizard
(Rocky & Bullwinkle Show)
"Do not let the past dictate who you
are, but let it become a part of who you will be."
- Nicki in "My Big
Fat Greek Wedding"
"No need is so compelling as the
need we all feel for our lives to make sense, to have meaning."
- Willis Harmon
"When you empty yourself of the
illusion of who you are and what you think you are, there is less to lose
than you had feared."
- Carol Orsborn
"It's not hard to make decisions
when you know what your values are."
- Roy Disney
"You can out-distance that which is
running after you, but not what is running inside you."
- Rawandan proverb
"It's never too late to be who you
might have been."
- George Eliot
"The thing that is really hard, and
really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of
becoming yourself."
- Anna Quindlen
"Only you can be yourself; no one
else is qualified for the job."
- Bits and Pieces
"The more you know who you are and
what it is that you want, the less things bother you."
- Bob Harris in "Lost
in Translation"
"No trumpets sound when the
important decisions of your life are made. Destiny is made known silently."
- Agnes DeMille
"Men and women who know themselves
are no longer fools; they stand on the threshold of the Door of Wisdom."
- Havelock Ellis
"Talents are best nurtured in
solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world."
- Goethe
"For years, copying other people, I
tried to know myself.
From within, I couldn't decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside."
- Rumi
"To know what you prefer instead of
humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to
have kept your soul alive."
- Robert Louis
Stevenson
"Every person is intended to have a
character of his own; to be what no other is, and to do what no other can
do."
- Channing
"The most important thing about
having goals is having one."
- Geoffrey A. Abert
"Clarity of purpose exposes the
foundation of the inner heart."
- M. H. McKee
"When one is out of touch with
oneself, one cannot touch others."
- Anne Morrow
Lindbergh
"Expedients are for the hour, but
principles are for the ages. Just because the rains descend and the
winds blow, we cannot afford to build on shifting sands."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"To be a person you have to have a
story to tell."
- Isak Dinesen
"True strength is found not in
perfection, but in understanding our own limitations."
- Annette Simmons
"Armed with self understanding and
knowledge of where we can make the greatest contribution, anything is
possible."
- Al Watts
"When any organization is defined by
an arbitrary division between the so-called facts of institutional life and
the institution's values, the institution's basic identity is eroded."
- Thomas Holland and
David Hester
"What we do is a measure of who we
are. If we imagine our work as labor, we become laborers. If we
imagine our work as art, we become artists."
- Jeffrey Patnaude
"We know what we are, but know not
what we may be."
- William Shakespeare
"No amount of human having or human
doing can make up for a deficit in human being."
- John Adams
"The ideal is in thyself; the impediment,
too, is in thyself."
- Thomas Carlyle
"Man is made by his belief. As
he believes, so he is."
- Bhagavad Gita
"It is not our abilities that
determine who we are, but our choices."
- Prof. Dumbledor in
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
"One secures the gold of the spirit
when he finds himself."
- Claude M. Bristol
"A life without purpose is an early
death."
- Goethe
"Think more about who you are and
less about what you do, for if you are just, your ways will be just."
- Meister Eckhart
"Personality can open doors, but
only character can keep them open."
- Elmer G. Leterman
"You've got to be original, because
if you are like somebody else, what do they need you for?"
- Bernadette Peters
"The purpose of our lives is to find
the purpose of our lives."
- Thomas Merton
"All paths lead to the same goal, to
convey to others what we are."
- Pablo Neruda
"If we don't know where we are, we
don't know who we are."
- Wallace Stegner
"All men should strive to learn
before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
- James Thurber
"Our character is our destiny."
- Heraclitus
"It is our choices that show what we
truly are, far more than our abilities."
- J.K. Rowling
(In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)
"Fixing your objective is like
identifying the North Star - you sight your compass on it and then use it as
the means of getting back on track when you tend to stray."
- Marshall E. Dimock
"This is the true joy in life: the
being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one."
- George Bernard Shaw
"I want to work for a company that
contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just
to invest in. I want something to believe in."
- Anita Roddick
"Without self-understanding, without
aim we can hurt others around us as well as ourselves. If we don't
have a sense of the "bigger picture" when things go wrong, we are not able
to respond appropriately to events or people."
- Caroline Myss (Sacred
Contracts)
"I yam what I yam and that's all
that I yam."
- Popeye the Sailor
Man
"We grow neither better or worse as
we grow older, but more like ourselves."
- Mary Lamberton
Becker
"We may be personally defeated, but
our principles never."
- William Lloyd
Garrison
"When people base their lives on
principles, 99% of their decisions are already made."
- Anonymous
"If a man does not know what port he
is steering for, no wind is favorable to him."
- Seneca
"If you don't decide where you're
going, life will decide for you."
- Tim Allen
"What can we gain by sailing to the
moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?
This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all
the others are not only useless, but disastrous."
- Thomas Merton
"Each of us needs an adequate
biography: How do I put together into a coherent image the pieces of
my life? How do I find the basic plot of my story?"
- James Hillman
"Dreaming is not only permissible
for leaders - it is obligatory."
- John Carver
"Clarifying the value system and
breathing life into it are the greatest contributions a leader can make."
- Peters and
Waterman, 1982
"Joy can be real only if people look
upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside
themselves and their personal happiness."
- Tolstoi
"Set me a task in which I can put
something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy; it is art."
- Bliss Carman
"When a man begins to understand
himself he begins to live. When he begins to live he begins to understand
his fellow men."
- Norvin G.
McGranahan
"Purpose is what gives life a
meaning."
- C. H. Parkhurst, D.
D.
"When we know how to read our own
hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others."
- Denis Diderot
"Dreams are
the touchstones of our character."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Character is what you are in the
dark."
- Dwight L. Moody
"Don't let anyone steal your dream.
It's your dream, not theirs."
- Dan Zadra
"Nothing so much contributes to
tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix
its intellectual eye."
- Mary Shelley
"No sooner do we think that we have
assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves with no place
to fit in."
- Gail Sheehy
"The great and glorious masterpiece
of man is how to live with purpose."
- Michel de Montaigne
"You can find on the outside only
what you possess on the inside."
- Adolfo Motiel
Ballesteros
"Only when one is connected to one's
inner core is one connected to others."
- Anne Morrow
Lindbergh
"You cannot be really first rate at
your work if your work is all you are."
- Anna Quindlen
"True self, when violate, will
always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until
we honor its truth."
- Parker Palmer
"To discover we have no story is to
acknowledge that our existence is meaningless, which we may find
unbearable."
- Robert Fulford (in
Triumph of the Narrative)
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