David Calhoun > David Calhoun's Quotes

“Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“Science tells us how to heal and how to kill; it reduces the death rate in retail and then kills us wholesale in war; but only wisdom—desire coordinated in the light of all experience—can tell us when to heal and when to kill.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“says a fine Greek adage, "is the gift of nature; but beautiful living is the gift of wisdom.")”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy

“But deep down inside, I was no longer enamored with the life I’d created. The only purpose I was serving was self-interest. While I rarely showed it to outsiders, my happiness waned day after day. A restless voice kept me up at night, telling me that until I found meaning, the money wouldn’t matter.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“So many of the people I admired—the musicians, the artists, the writers—created their greatest works not during a period of happiness and contentment, but during a period of struggle.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“When you align individually high-performing people around the idea that they are collectively underdogs, you tap into the cohesive gel that brings early adopters together. We created an enemy for us to rebel against (this belief that our approach was “impossible”), which is one of the fastest ways to unite people around a common goal. And with each new person who joined our volunteer army, we received both the validation and the skills necessary to prove that we could carve a different path from those who came before us.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“The paperwork would make me CEO and grant me a salary, equity, and benefits. Between the money and the health insurance, I could cover all of my immediate needs. But I’d have to change everything I stood for.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“People who try to blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance or government scandal are often punished, without recourse to the courts. Kei Sugaoka, an American of Japanese descent, was quickly dismissed from his job as a safety inspector for General Electric after he disclosed a cover-up of safety violations at a nuclear reactor in Fukushima. Sugaoka said he watched his supervisors carefully erase videotapes showing cracks in a critical component of the reactor, yet when he “blew the whistle” and told regulators, his name was improperly disclosed to the utility and his employer.”
― Michael Zielenziger, Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation

“Do we know exactly who we are? The more urgently we quest for our authentic selves, the more they tend to recede. The Knight and Sancho, as the great work closes, know exactly who they are, not so much by their adventures as through their marvelous conversations, be they quarrels or exchanges of insights.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“In my walks, every man I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn from him.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I shall pass this way but once; any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
― Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People

“Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. “To know all is to forgive all.”
― Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People

“85% of your financial success is due to your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Shockingly, only 15% is due to technical knowledge”
― Carnegie Institute of Technology

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
― Socrates

“I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too.”
― John Stuart Mill

“I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds. They want to make something timeless, but they focus instead on immediate payoffs and instant gratification.”
― Ryan Holiday, Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts

“Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“He is so rich, he has no room to shit.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”
― William Martin, The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away — yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth's orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.”
― Shantideva

“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted mostly.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“All Creatures exist for a purpose. Even an ant knows what that purpose is--not with its brain, but somehow it knows. Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist.”
― John (Fire) Lame Deer, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”
― Seneca