John > John's Quotes

“Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. —James Michener”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Playing it safe is like body surfing in two feet of water. You may not drown, but you’re also not in deep enough to catch any but the most meager of waves. The most dangerous strategy is to play it safe. In its place, Break-It Thinkers take risks and break rules and challenge convention, making change an ally.” —Robert Kriegel 2”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Why don’t universities specify the length of time a degree will be fully applicable and useful?”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Henry Ford said, “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”3”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Hill once said: “Failure seems to be nature’s plan for preparing us for great responsibilities.”4”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“So part of the issue is—do you want to do something great—in any area? If you are content with mediocrity in your life, then you will try to protect yourself from any failure. Just recognize the trade-off.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“It’s not just what you do in a job or your business that will identify you as a success or a failure. Not having “date nights” or saying, “I love you” daily will put your marriage at risk of failure. Spending sixty-five hours a week at your job will put your emotional well-being at risk of failure. Eating Twinkies and Big Macs and not exercising will put your health at risk of failure. Financing a car or paying more than the equivalent of one month’s income in cash will put your financial health at risk of failure.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“I’ve heard that Richard Branson will not invest in any company unless the person in charge has failed at least twice.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Research shows that if you are under thirty years old, there is a 90 percent chance you will be fired sometime in the next twenty years.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Bernie Marcus was fired from a job as manager of the Handy Dan Improvement Center, then went on to start Home Depot.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“If failure is not a possibility then winning is not so sweet.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Your only “security” is knowing what you do well. Knowing your areas of competence will give you freedom amid corporate politics and unexpected layoffs. Wayne Gretzky was once asked why he was such a great hockey player. He responded with an eloquent morsel of wisdom: “I simply went to where the puck was going to be.” An average player would go where the puck was or is.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eye off the goal.” —Hannah More6”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“In coaching people going through change, I am often struck by their discouragement, frustration, and resentment. I have come to recognize, however, that those feelings reveal that the person is looking backward—at something that has already occurred. As soon as we are able to create a clear plan for the future, those feelings dissipate and are replaced by hope, optimism, and enthusiasm. In all my years of coaching, I have never seen a person who has a clear plan and goals for the future who is also depressed.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Continual learning is the key to continual living.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” —Jim Rohn”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” —Mark Twain”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn.” —Henry S. Haskins3”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong you’ll never come up with something original.” —Sir Ken Robinson4”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” —Henry Ford5”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“(Speaking of driving time—join the Automobile University. If you drive twenty-five thousand miles a year at an average speed of 46 mph, you will spend about the same amount of time in your car as an average college student spends in the classroom. The question then is, what are you doing with that time? You can listen to any one of thousands of programs and transform your success.)”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.” —Author Unknown”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. . . . Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it’s the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”7”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. All work is empty save when there is love; and when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. —Kahlil”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Stephen Covey said we all want “to live, to love, to learn and to leave a legacy.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal

“Many years ago Rudyard Kipling gave an address at McGill University in Montreal. He said one striking thing which deserves to be remembered. Warning the students against an over-concern for money, or position, or glory, he said: “Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.” —Halford E. Luccock”
― Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything

“As Thomas Merton put it, “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.”
― Dan Miller, 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal