153 Super Smart Quotations That Made My Draw Drop

So, I’m on vacation for the next two weeks (my couch).

However, I wanted to keep last week’s tradition alive since the feedback from the Ridiculously Long Lists was so positive! As such, I came up with five more lists. This should hold you over until I return on January 7th.

See ya in ’08!

Oh, and don’t forget to read all the lists from last week:
101 Lessons Learned from 2007
101 Ways to Create a Powerful Web Presence
123 Questions Every Marketer Must Ask
69 Mini Philosophies on Just about Everything
49 Ways to become an Idea Powerhouse

And now, for the Christmas Day version of my ridiculously long list:
153 Super Smart Quotations That Made My Draw Drop

1. The definition of flexibility is being constantly open to the fact that you might be on the wrong track. –Brian Tracy.

2. The more original your idea is; the less good advice people will be able to give you. –Hugh Mcleod.

3. People forget facts; but they remember themes. –Sam Ham.

4. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. –Chet Raymo.

5. The testing process usually happens when we least expect it, thereby catching you off guard and giving you no chance to display anything by your real personality. –Napoleon Hill.

6. Get busy living or get busy dying. –Andy Dufregne.

7. If you haven’t experienced it, it’s not true. –Kabir

8. Trying is just an easy way of not doing something. –Ken Blanchard.

9. You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. –M. Kathleen Casey.

10. He who has the biggest list, wins. —Lisa Jiminez.

11. Stay in your lane. If you’re good enough, people will move to you. –Russel Simmons.

12. Don’t steamroll your way into a conversation before establishing any relational credibility. –Bill Hybels.

13. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it halfway, we easily become indirect and apathetic. –Tchaikovsky.

14. It’s not (just) your list; it’s the relationship WITH your list. –Terry Dean.

15. Jump, then grow wings on the way down. –Jack Canfield.

16. One man’s over-eagerness can be another’s alienation. –Madelyn Burley-Allen

17. Art is learning how to be quiet. –James Hubbel.

18. You are constantly building your character out of the impressions you gather from your daily environment, therefore you can shape your character as you wish. –Mihaly Czsickzentmentaly

19. If you do anything regularly for a while, sooner or later the weirdoes will show up. –Jeff Buckley

20. When the president does it; that means it’s not illegal. –Richard Nixon, 1977

21. People don’t listen to what you say, they listen to what you do. –Crucial Conversations

22. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart. –Napoleon Hill.

23. It is what you ARE that makes the loudest statement. –Marsha Sinetar

24. There are certain movements when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees. –Victor Hugo.

25. When you run out of questions, you don’t just run out of answers, you run out of hope. –House.

26. The deeper your belief, the deeper your pockets. –Gitomer.

27. People who lie, cheat and steal in relationships are communicating that they have such an inferior view of themselves that they are not worthy of another’s trust. –Chip Bell.

28. People tend to romanticize what they can’t quite remember. –Ira Flatlow.

29. Successful people know a universe of people they can ask for help. –Questions That Work.

30. Proper prospecting prevents poverty. –Gitomer.

31. Absorb knowledge from every possible source and opportunity. Power gravitates to the man who knows how and why. –Orsen Swett Marden

32. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. –Romans 12:2 (Come on, it’s Christmas. Gotta quote the Bible.)

33. If people underestimate your ability, they will present you with an opportunity to deal with them when their guard is down because. Since they weren’t preparing a defense for the mental assault they were expecting from you, you will accomplish your objective before they realize what happened. –Glen Bland.

34. Many counselors bring success. –Proverbs 15:22

35. Sell something to one person who can make a decision for 500 people. Never sell to 500 people individually. –Bill Brooks.

36. Build something you have never built before. –Unknown

37. An idea is not any good unless it’s on the verge of being stupid. –David Mack.

38. The instant you stop trying to impose your agenda on others, you eliminate the fight for control. You sidestep irrelevant battles over whose view of the world is correct. –The Influencer

39. If a thought is not backed by emotions, zero action can be taken. –Lawton Howell

40. The less you know, the more likely you are to come up with an original idea. –Questions That Work

41. Make people want to stand in line and paying higher prices than they know they should. –Doug Hall.

42. People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs. –Peter Drucker.

43. If you can make it safe to learn, reduce tension and hostility, you may find that people’s natural curiosity will reappear. –Questions That Work

44. If they didn’t hire you, don’t solve their problem. –Gerald Weinberg.

45. Make sure they pay enough so they’ll do what you say. –Gerald Weinberg

46. Passion and stamina are twins. –Lawton Howell

47. Make personal growth a daily priority. –John Maxwell.

48. Participate as fully as possibly in the world around you. –Mihaly.

49. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude and the society of thyself. –Sir Thomas Browne

50. Consider data without prejudice. –Edison.

51. Your future is your property. –Dan Sullivan.

52. We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that will determines what we accomplish and how well. –Mihaly.

53. Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition. –Edison.

54. Take a break from your problem. Find a way to pull its tail and make it worse. –Michael Gelb.

55. If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. –Toni Morrison

56. Write the book you’d want to read. –Martha Stewart.

57. The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours. –Edison

58. To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. –e.e. cummings, 1955

59. The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. –Mark Twain.

60. Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. –Judy Garland

61. We should learn to detect and watch the gleam of light which flashes across our own minds. –Emerson.

62. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. –Herman Mehlville.

63. People are idiots. –Scott Adams.

64. No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would. –Mark Twain.

65. If you’re not booked, you’re not any good! –Larry Winget.

66. The unexpected jolts us out of our preconceived notions, our assumptions, our certainties, that is such a fertile source of innovation. –Drucker

67. He who wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. –Edmund Burke

68. Doing anything worthwhile takes forever. –Hugh

69. Diversity is the opposite of laziness. –Dan Kennedy

70. Don’t get stampeded by what people around you value. The task is to figure out what YOU value – and value highly enough to throw yourself into with unqualified passion. –David Maister

71. Unless a person knows how to give order to her thoughts, attention will be attracted to whatever is most problematic at the moment. –Mihaly.

72. To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance. –Mihaly

73. Playfullness is the essential feature of productive thought. –Einstein.

74. Don’t congratulate yourself for baseline integrity. –Chris Johnson.

75. When we complain, we often project onto others the dissatisfaction of how we’re dealing with our own lives. –P.M. Forni.

76. Don’t worry about what’s ahead. Just go as far as you can. From there you can see farther. –Edwin C. Bliss.

77. Books don’t sell books. People sell books. –Frank Gromling.

78. Your vision gains power when you go public with it. –Nido.

79. To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. –e.e. cummings

80. Forge in the smithy of your soul. –Rollo May.

81. A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality. –Plato

82. Winners focus, losers spray. –Sydney Harris

83. If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s because he works harder than you. –Hugh

84. The definition of being good is being able to make it look easy. –Hugh

85. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Thing are made slowly and in pain. –Hugh.

86. The longer it takes you to become successful, the harder it will be for somebody else to take it away from you. –Hugh.

87. You can’t be authentic when you’re trying to be authentic. –FastCompany, April 2007

88. The whole purpose of working is to support your ideal lifestyle. –Brian Tracy

89. If you’re waiting for the job, you’re dead. –Dustin Hoffman

90. The less you talk, the more you’re listened to. –Abigal van Buren.

91. Open-mindedness is the harvest of a quiet eye. –William Wodsworth

92. You get paid consistent with your ability to solve problems. –Ron Willingham

93. A brand doesn’t feel real when it overtly tries to make itself real. –FastCompany, April 2007

94. One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting. –Mihaly

95. A river reaches places its source never knows. –Oswald Chambers

96. Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid. –Albert Schweitzer.

97. Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. –Rick Warren.

98. Kiosks don’t stare at you. –Steve Forbes

99. In art there are two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. –Gauguin

100. No problem can stand the assault of sustained thinking. –Voltaire

101. I want to be the poster boy for your nightmare. –Fred Smith

102. Don’t fall in love with your own excuses. –Brian Tracy

103. Court each other forever. –Zig Ziglar

104. You think I’m gonna stop doing something that works for me just because you don’t like it? –Ira Hayes

105. Kids will eat anything if there’s a smile behind it. –Superintendent of Missouri Schools

106. Spontaneity is the product of great preparation. -Doe Lang

107. It’s yours for the asking. -Earl Nightingale

108. If they can’t repeat it, they didn’t get it. –Sam Horn.

109. You can’t get rich unless you EN-rich. –Earl Nightingale.

110. A wise man does at once what a fool does at last. –Baltazar Gracian

111. It’s ok to be ignorant, but it’s not ok to STAY ignorant. –James Dale

112. It’s a beautiful life, just as advertised. –Edwin McCain.

113. If you want to learn what it takes, go back and see what it took. –Disney

114. It’s a new book if you’ve haven’t read it yet. –-Owner of a used bookstore in Sioux Falls

115. The hardest thing for you to do is take your thing and put it into another container and make it taste the same. –-HBO Special, Jerry Seinfeld

116. The only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about. –Oscar Wilde

117. Everyone picks the best one when given a choice. –Seth Godin (For a list of 100 more Seth Godin keepers, email [email protected] and I’ll share his bald brilliance with you!)

118. It’s hard to build community around mediocre and mundane writing. –Guy Kawasaki

119. Music is my weapon. –Random t-shirt in a Beale Street Souvenir Store

120. Practice aggressive pondering. –-Andy Masters

121. If you have one Hungarian as a friend, you won’t have any enemies. –-A drag queen I met in Ft. Lauderdale.

122. If you can’t hide it, magnify it. –Giovanni

123. Real love stories never have endings. –-Random poster in a parade in Hermann, MO.

124. No great work of art is ever finished. –Michelangelo

125. You can’t please all the people all the time. Last night, all of those people were at my show. –Mitch Hedberg

126. Only in writing do you discover what you know. –-Julia Cameron

127. Writing teaches you that you never write just what you know. You write what you learn as you’re writing. –Julia

128. Ideas come to you and trigger other ideas. Thoughts crystallize and connect with others, and the combination produces a compound: an insight. –Julia

129. It’s not just a daydream if it becomes your whole life. –-Train

130. Don’t be a person of success, be a person of value. –Dali Lama.

131. Some of the worst things in my life never happened. –Mark Twain.

132. At the workingman’s house, hunger looks in, but dares not enter. –Franklin

133. When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it. –Freud.

134. When you meet someone, you intuitively ask yourself three questions: “(1) Can I trust you?; (2) Do you care about me?; and (3) Will you do the right thing?”. –Lou Holtz

135. If you are doing something you would do for nothing – then you are on your way to salvation. And if you could drop it in a minute and forget the outcome, you are even further along. And if while you are doing it you are transported into another existence, there is no need for you to worry about the future.” –George Sheehan

136. Christians already? It seems to me that it takes a lifetime of work. –Maya Angelou

137. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you believe atrocities. –Random bumper sticker on a van in Queretero, Mexico.

138. Non-salespeople will sell if they think they’re doing something else. –Bill Guertin

139. You’re not out here to die for your country; you’re out to here to make your enemies die for their country. –Patton

140. Sweetness will get you more. –Random dude named I.C. I met on a plane.

141. Everything gets better for us when WE get better. –Larry Winget.

142. Love brings about passion and passion is always marketable. –Winget.

143. No balls, no babies. –Mark Cuban.

144. You only have to be right once. –Cuban.

145. Nobody values your time but YOU. –Brian Tracy.

146. “Once you have paid the price to establish yourself as an expert, a person of integrity who delivers high-quality results on time, you get to reap the benefits for the rest of your life. That’s called Creating Momentum.” –Canfield.

147. Dare the things that age will fear. –Apple campaign

148. The Latin root for the verb “to compete” is competere, which means, “to seek together.” So be nice. Stop making war on the competition and start making love to the customer. –Richard Connaroe

149. You’ve got to kiss a little ass to kick a lot of ass. –A janitor I met at BEA

150. Do what you do so well that people want to see you do it again – and when they do, they will go out and tell others. –-Disney

151. Big breaks come from small fractures. –John Kapelos

152. The acoustics of the world are too good, so that what you ARE speaks so loud that people can’t hear what you SAY you are. If you don’t like the way you’re perceived, change yourself. That’s how you change perception. –-Bruce Markus

153. Seeking leadership destroys the process. –Arthur Scharff.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What quotations make your jaw drop?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Share them here!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag

Life Coaches? Bah.

No systems. No formulas. Just someone who listens, asks KILLER questions and facilitates creative breakthroughs.

Rent Scott’s Brain today!

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