Brilliant Quotes - Page 18

• When one gives whatever one can without restraint, the barriers of individuality break down. It no longer becomes possible to tell whether it is the student offering himself to the teacher, or the teacher offering herself to the student. One sees only two immaculate beings, reflecting one another like a pair of brilliant mirrors.

  Laozi

  Teacher, Two, Mirrors

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• In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.

  James Mattis

  Military, Home, Enemy

  James Mattis' speech at the US Joint Forces Command Conference, May 2010.

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• A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  Education, School, Writing

  Gwendolyn Brooks, Gloria Jean Wade Gayles (2003). “Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.25, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Their brilliant audio expert, who is a marine biologist, should really be looking after Flipper

  Rob Halford

  Marine, Experts, Audio

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• EVERY SINGLE DANCER, SINGER and BAND MEMBER is a BRILLIANT SOLO ARTIST

  Ben Brantley

  Artist, Dancer, Band

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• People who want to write either do it or they don't. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It's amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.

  Octavia Butler

  Giving Up, Writing, Persistence

  Octavia E. Butler (2011). “Bloodchild and Other Stories”, p.148, Seven Stories Press

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• Humans: such a brilliant model of emotional self-awareness.

  Charles Stross

  Emotional, Self, Awareness

  Charles Stross (2005). “Accelerando”, p.439, Penguin

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• Every spoof gives more power to the original.

  Shepard Fairey

  Giving, Spoof, Originals

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• All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.

  Robert Greene

  People, Want, Masters

  Robert Greene (2010). “The 48 Laws Of Power”, p.4, Profile Books

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• ...we may be able to prove conclusively that all men are born with potentially brilliant intellects...and that the source of cultural creativity is the consciousness that springs from social cooperation and loving interaction...the majority of us live far below our potential, because of the oppressive nature of most societies.

  John Blacking

  Music, Spring, Creativity

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• The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Past, Errors, Ideas

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.6, Crown Business

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• A leader has to be one of two things: he either has to be a brilliant visionary himself, a truly creative strategist, in which case he can do what he likes and get away with it; or else he has to be a true empowerer who can bring out the best in others.

  Henry Mintzberg

  Two, Creative, Leader

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• Usually, no one quite knew where Django Reinhardt was going to be, but I met his brother and about an hour later in walks Django with an entourage of friends. He always traveled with a large group-carried his own admirers with him, the most sinister-looking bunch of hoodlums you've ever seen. I walked up and offered to buy him a drink. That seemed to be the right thing to do... he was the first really brilliant solo guitarist I ever became aware of, I had records of his when I was 10 years old. It just blew my mind that anyone could play a guitar like that. Still does.

  Charlie Byrd

  Music, Brother, Django

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• No matter how brilliant a man may be, he will never engender confidence in his subordinates and associates if he lacks simple honesty and moral courage.

  J. Lawton Collins

  Honesty, Simple, Men

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• Simple, practical, brilliant. What a wonderful world it will be when all families give their children the gifts presented in Dr. Reznick’s book. Joy, success . . . and health and happiness are just around the corner!

  Harvey Karp

  Children, Book, Simple

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• At Brandies I discovered Feminism. And I instantly became a convert... writing brilliant papers in my Myths of Patriarchy class, in which I likened my fate as a woman to other victims throughout the ages.

  Heather Hart

  Writing, Fate, Class

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• Converting the war into an antislavery crusade was a brilliant move on Lincoln's part, and it resulted in a surge of voluntary recruits into the Union army. But this did not last. Northerners may have disapproved of slavery in the South but, once the bloodletting began in earnest, their willingness to die for that conviction began to wane. [...] Lincoln faced the embarrassing reality that he soon would have no army to carry on the crusade.

  G. Edward Griffin

  War, Moving, Army

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• Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like.

  Brian Chesky

  People, Kind, Millions

  "The Best Advice Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Ever Received" by Alyson Shontell, www.businessinsider.com. January 13, 2013.

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• If there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement.

  Xunzi

  Motivational, Achievement, Effort

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• 'Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.'

  Douglas Adams

  Mad, Statistics, Nonsense

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.304, Pan Macmillan

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• Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

  Thomas Sowell

  Men, Ninety Nine, Ideas

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, Basic Books

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• The day is refracted, and the next and the one after that, all of them broken up into a hundred juggled segments, each brilliant and self-contained so that the hours are no longer linear but assorted like bright sweets in a jar.

  Penelope Lively

  Sweet, Self, Broken

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• Shocking is easy. Shockingly brilliant, a bit more challenging.

  Lee Clow

  Challenges, Easy, Shocking

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• Truly brilliant marketing happens when you take something most people think of as a weakness and reposition it so people think of it as a strength.

  Reed Hastings

  Success, Business, Thinking

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• I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or maggot.

  Caspar David Friedrich

  Butterfly, Age, Cocoons

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