Chris > Chris's Quotes

“The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.
Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An
important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative
thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will
change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you
to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to
crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that
don't increase you will eventually decrease you.

Consider this:
Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems
with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who
never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has
a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the
bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone
who's not going anywhere.

With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful
where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the
person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with
wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you
will learn how to soar to great heights.
"A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the
kind of friends he chooses."

The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you
closely associate - for the good and the bad.

Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends.
Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will
always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first
and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and
will fit somewhere in the criteria above.

"In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends."

"Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them."
"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters.
Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.."..”
― Colin Powell

“Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”
― Colin Powell

“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.”
― Colin Powell

“Get mad, then get over it. ”
― Colin Powell

“Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.”
― Colin Powell, On Leadership

“Always focus on the front windshield and not the review mirror.”
― Colin Powell

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
― James Baldwin

“People can cry much easier than they can change.”
― James Baldwin

“True rebels after all, are as rare as true lovers,and in both cases, to mistake a fever for passion can destroy one's life”
― James Baldwin

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
― Martha Graham

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”
― Martha Graham

“Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...”
― Malcolm X

“You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.”
― Booker T. Washington

“If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection.”
― Howard Thurman

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman

“Hard to sit here and be close to you, and not kiss you.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Heavenly witnesses are a tricky lot, to be used by whoever is closest to Heaven at the time. And legend and theology, which are designed to sanctify our fears, crimes, and aspirations, also reveal them for what they are.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“Our crown has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do is wear it”
― James Baldwin

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
― Horace Mann

“Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”
― Raymond Carver, A New Path to the Waterfall

“I’m a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.”
― Eartha Kitt

“Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.”
― Roger J. Corless, Vision of Buddhism: The Space Under the Tree

“Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.”
― James Baldwin

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
― James Baldwin

“We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.”
― James Baldwin

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin