Gratitude

A man’s indebtedness…is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

Ruth Benedict (1887 – 1948)
U.S. anthropologist.

Sacrifice

I think certain government officials, industrialists and celebrated persons should make it clear they are prepared to be sacrificed if taken hostage. If that were done, what gain would there be for terrorists in taking hostages?

Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978)
U.S. anthropologist.

Respect

The most stable and therefore most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external forms or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970)
U.S. psychologist.

Quotations

The nicest thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive.

Kenneth Williams (1926 – 1988)
British comic actor.

Patience

There is a patience of the wild…that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs primarily to life when it hunts its living food.

Jack London (1876 – 1916)
U.S. writer.

Opportunity

Hoist up saile while gale doth last,
Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure.

Robert Southwell (1561 – 1595)
English poet and martyr.

Nature

A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850)
British poet.

Modesty

A lot of men who have accepted—or had imposed upon them in boyhood—the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves. If they do not blow their own trumpets it is because they feel you are not fit to listen to the performance.

J. B. Priestley (1894 – 1984)
British writer.

Leadership

The leadership of western man in the human world is coming to an end, not because western civilization is materially bankrupt or has lost its economic or military strength, but because the Western order has played its part and no longer possesses that “stock” of “values” which give it its predominance.

Sayyid Qutb   (1903? – 1966)
Egyptian philosopher and political leader.

Knowledge

A company’s…ability to generate those exceptional returns in a knowledge-based economy is dependent, in large measure, upon its ability to attract, retain, and develop the right work force—and whether it succeeds in unleashing their mental capabilities.

Jeffrey Pfeffer   (1946 – )

U.S. management writer.