Improvement Quotes - Page 14

• Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.

  T. H. White

  Mean, Race, Ideas

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• The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement

  John Dewey

  Community, Problem, Form

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.64, 谷月社

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• The highest reward for our toil is not what we get for it but what we become by it. ... Mistakes are not failures. They are proof that we are making an effort. When we understand that, we can more easily move out of our comfort zone, try something new, and improve. ... Improvement demands a commitment to grow long after the mood in which it was made has passed.

  John C. Maxwell

  Mistake, Moving, Commitment

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• There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Animal, Soul, Sides

  Leo Tolstoy (2010). “A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Se”, p.50, Simon and Schuster

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• Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures-some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success ... Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else.

  James Dyson

  Disappointment, Years, Firsts

  "Failure can be an option" by James Dyson, www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2012.

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• In a world where routine production is footloose...competitive advantage lies not in one-time breakthroughs but in continual improvements. Stable technologies get away.

  Robert Reich

  Lying, Technology, Routine

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• The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.

  Paul Theroux

  Self, Vanishing, Disappear

  Paul Theroux (2004). “Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I have never doubted the importance of melody. I like melody very much, and I consider it the most important element in music, and I labour many years on the improvement of its quality in my compositions.

  Sergei Prokofiev

  Years, Important, Quality

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• I don't think my playing style has really changed over the years; it's just gotten better. I can hear the improvement in comparing older records and later records. I'm referring to soloing ability, to having a better sound, to knowing chords better, and getting rhythmically stronger. It also has to do with ideas - learning how to edit your ideas and being better able to follow ideas out to a logical conclusion.

  Gary Bartz

  Thinking, Years, Ideas

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• We're trying to make our current house look domestic so that somebody will want to buy it. We're making a lot of simple, obvious improvements that never would have occurred to us to make while we actually lived here, because, tragically, we both happen to be domestically impaired. If we were birds, our nest would consist of a single twig with the eggs attached via Scotch tape.

  Dave Barry

  Simple, Eggs, Scotch

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Talks Back”, p.71, Crown Archetype

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• I want incremental improvements. There's the record of all the revolutionary and violent change and extremism in general - it's dreadful.

  Martin Amis

  Records, Want, Revolutionary

  "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

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• Can we have a conversation about the substance? That's what I welcome. We're happy to have those conversations if there are places where people think there can be improvements. We want competition in the system, so let's talk about that.

  Sylvia Mathews Burwell

  Thinking, People, Competition

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• During the current period of health care development in our country, improvement of the management quality is becoming increasingly important. This is due to many processes, including new ones, such as increase in the number of financial resources used to implement the state guarantees program, the need for more efficient spending of funds, rearrangement of cash flows, single-channel financing

  Veronika Skvortsova

  Country, Numbers, Cash Flow

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• It's a very selfish time. When I'm here at home, my responsibilities are far greater. I'm forced to be way more selfless. My priorities are so far down the list that it's hard to see them. And yet, when I'm on tour, I basically have to get the show right, every night, but the days are really constructed around selfish activities for self-improvement, or not. That's where I feel guilty because I know that life is going on full-speed when I'm not around.

  Gavin Rossdale

  Selfish, Home, Responsibility

  Source: collider.com

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• Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side. Dr. Johnson has said that the habit of looking at the best side of a thing is worth more to a man than a thousand pounds a year. And we possess the power, to a great extent, of so exercising the will as to direct the thoughts upon objects calculated to yield happiness and improvement rather than their opposites.

  Samuel Smiles

  Exercise, Dark, Men

  Samuel Smiles (1868). “Self-Help; with Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance by Samuel Smiles”, p.391

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• The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Civilization, Ideas

  Carl von Clausewitz (2008). “On War”, p.76, Princeton University Press

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• I still have a lot of room for improvement. I need to become a more skilled player.

  Tony Parker

  Player, Needs, Rooms

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• I'm happy, but there is always room for improvement.

  Corey Perry

  Rooms, Room For Improvement, Always Room For Improvement

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• I'm not really satisfied. I've done all right, but there's room for improvement.

  Travis Hafner

  Done, Rooms, Satisfied

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• The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century - medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer. The people who created these things - the doers - are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Hero, Past

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.204, Hoover Press

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• There's always room for improvement. I'm always focused on the results, and those are the precise things that I don't really experience as a part of the performance.

  Ariel Pink

  Rooms, Results, Performances

  Interview with T. Cole Rachel, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 4, 2013.

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• Some entrepreneurs have a bad habit of taking personal credit for all improvements and innovations at their startups. If you penalize or ignore employee initiatives, you can be certain that they won't be repeated, and motivation for more conventional performance will suffer.

  Martin Zwilling

  Motivation, Entrepreneur, Innovation

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I think it would be a great improvement if there were no D&O insurance . The counter-argument is that no-one with any money would serve on a board. But I think net net you'd be better off.

  Charlie Munger

  Thinking, Would Be, Boards

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• I accept the proposition that there has been a significant improvement in underlying productivity growth in the United States, that it is very closely tied to improvements in information and communications technology, and that it is likely to spread around the world. But I resist the new economy label because it seems to encourage a disrespect for the old rules that could seriously undermine our success in taking advantage of the new opportunities.

  Laurence Meyer

  Communication, Technology, Opportunity

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• We all hold on to some image of the family we want, based one way or another on the family we had. Lots of people are thrilled about the families they came from, others couldn't get away fast enough. Most people fall into that vast middle ground: great affection mixed with a few ideas for improvement. A couple of things they wish could have perhaps been done differently.

  Paul Reiser

  Couple, Fall, Ideas

  "Familyhood". Book by Paul Reiser, www.today.com. May 09, 2011.

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