Improvement Quotes - Page 21

• We are not of what we feel or believe to do, we are of what we do or fail to do.

  Judith McNaught

  Believe, Failing, Feels

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• I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right.

  Muhammad Ali Jinnah

  Positive, Believe, Self Confidence

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• Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society, they are a challenge to it.

  Clay Shirky

  Challenges, Tools, Modern

  Clay Shirky (2009). “Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens when People Come Together”, p.97, Penguin UK

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• If you do not change, you can become extinct !

  Spencer Johnson

  Life, Change, Moved On

  Spencer Johnson (1998). “Who Moved My Cheese?: An A-Mazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life”, p.27, Penguin

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• Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.

  John Cage

  Order, Mind, Desire

  John Cage (2010). “Silence: Lectures and Writings”, p.109, Wesleyan University Press

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• It is especially difficult for modern people to conceive that our modern, scientific age might not be an improvement over the prescientific period.

  Michael Crichton

  People, Age, Might

  Michael Crichton (1999). “Timeline”

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• If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there’d be no democracy, no public schools, women’s rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I was afraid to challenge my religious beliefs because that was the basis of creation—mine anyway. I was afraid to question the Bible or anything in it, and when I did, that’s when I became involved with PFLAG and realized that my son was a perfectly normal human being and there was nothing for God to heal because Bobby was perfect just the way he was.

  Mary Griffith

  Religious, Children, School

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• You just said you were sorry." ... "I was only apologizing," he said stiffly, "for startling you. The applause was to compliment you on the improvement in your life-saving techniques since the last time you-

  Meg Cabot

  Sorry, Compliments You, Lasts

  Meg Cabot (2011). “Abandon”, p.253, Scholastic Inc.

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• If you wish information and improvement from the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Men, Errors, Wish

  Benjamin Franklin (2016). “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, p.21, First Avenue Editions

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• Yes," he said. "I am sure. I double-checked everything after you went home yesterday. I even made a few improvements, just in case." The first part of that reassured her. The second part... not so much. "What kind of improvements?" "Oh, nothing, really. Mostly just streamlining. You really did very well; I certainly don't want you to think that I am one of those people who has to be in control all the- Oh, well, I suppose that's actually true- I do have to be in control all the time. But only because I am in charge, of course.

  Rachel Caine

  Home, Thinking, Yesterday

  Rachel Caine (2010). “Ghost Town: The Morganville Vampires”, p.134, Penguin

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• Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?

  Frank Herbert

  Hate, Thought Provoking, Innovation

  Frank Herbert (1987). “Heretics of Dune”, p.201, Penguin

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• As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

  Sarah Dessen

  Age, Eighteen, Ifs

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “This Lullaby”, p.116, Penguin

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• WE ALREADY HAVE everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves—the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds—never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.

  Pema Chodron

  Inspiring, Block, Eye

  Pema Chodron (2001). “Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living”, p.1, Shambhala Publications

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• I was late to understand that chaos and intensity are no subsitute for lasting love, nor are they necessarily an improvement on real life. Normal people are not always boring. On the contrary. Volatility and passion, although often more romantic and enticing, are not intrinsically preferable to a steadiness of experience and feeling about another person.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Real, Passion, People

  Kay Redfield Jamison (2014). “An Unquiet Mind: A memoir of moods and madness”, p.104, Pan Macmillan

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• They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.

  Frantz Fanon

  Mean, Reform, Doe

  Frantz Fanon (2007). “The Wretched of the Earth”, p.79, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, War, Race

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Edward Egner (1961). “The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”

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• So we both strip off our boots and socks and, while there’s some improvement, I could swear he’s making an effort to snap every branch we encounter

  Suzanne Collins

  Effort, Encounters, Boots

  Suzanne Collins (2008). “The Hunger Games”, p.315, Scholastic Inc.

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• If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man's outward actions – if he continues to be just a snobbish or spiteful or envious or ambitious as he was before – then I think we must suspect that his 'conversion' was largely imaginary.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Thinking, Ambitious

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people

  C. S. Lewis

  People, Redemption, Mere

  C.S. Lewis (1960). “Mere Christianity”

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• Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work.

  James Randi

  Knowledge, Science, Discovery

  James Randi (1993). “The Mask of Nostradamus: The Prophecies of the World's Most Famous Seer”

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• In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining...I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.

  Rosalind Franklin

  Views, Religion, World

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• We are in the ordinary position of scientists of having to be content with piecemeal improvements: we can make several things clearer, but we cannot make anything clear.

  Frank P. Ramsey

  Science, Ordinary, Scientist

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• Satyagraha is the pursuit of truth. My grandfather believed that truth should be the cornerstone of everybody's life and that we must dedicate our lives to pursuing truth, to finding out the truth in our lives. And so his entire philosophy was the philosophy of life. It was not just a philosophy for conflict resolution, but something that we have to imbibe in our life and live it all the time so that we can improve and become better human beings.

  Arun Manilal Gandhi

  Truth, Philosophy, Grandfather

  "Satyagraha 100 Years Later: Gandhi Launches Modern Non-Violent Resistance Movement on Sept. 11, 1906". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. September 8, 2006.

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• It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.

  Bill Gates

  Change, Success, Business

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• Synergy is the driver. There are two levels of synergy: there are operating synergies, which, you know, you'd have to be stupid not to try to take advantage of, and then there are strategic synergies. In other words, in what positions you would be more sustainable, more long term, and so on.

  John C. Malone

  Change, Stupid, Two

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