George Jensen > George's Quotes

“Character – the inner world of motives and values that shapes our actions – is the ultimate determiner of the nature of our leadership. It empowers our capacities while keeping them in check. It distinguishes those who steward power well from those who abuse power. Character weaves such values as integrity, honesty, and selfless service into the fabric of our lives, organizations, and cultures.”
― Bill Thrall, The Ascent of a Leader Experience Guide

“The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs — and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”
― Alain de Botton

“Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.”
― Alain de Botton

“One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.”
― Alain de Botton

“One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”
― Alain de Botton

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”
― Alain De Botton, On Love

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.”
― Alain de Botton

“The largest part of what we call 'personality' is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness".”
― Alain de Botton

“Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist