Improvement Quotes - Page 25

• Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Inspirational, Success, Wisdom

  Andrew Carnegie (2007). “The Empire of Business”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Kaizen and innovation are the two major strategies people use to create change. Where innovation demands shocking and radical reform, all kaizen asks is that you take small, comfortable steps toward improvement.

  Robert D. Maurer

  Change, Two, People

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• As you experience success in applying kaizen to clear goals like weight loss or career advancement, remember to hold onto its essence: an optimistic belief in our potential for continuous improvement.

  Robert D. Maurer

  Optimistic, Loss, Clear Goals

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• Without an acquaintance with chemistry, the statesman must remain a stranger to the true vital interests of the state, to the means of its organic development and improvement; ... The highest economic or material interests of a country, the increased and more profitable production of food for man and animals, ... are most closely linked with the advancement and diffusion of the natural sciences, especially of chemistry.

  Justus von Liebig

  Country, Knowledge, Mean

  Justus von Liebig (1859). “Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in its relation to Physiology, Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce and Political Economy: Edited by John Blyth”, p.21

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• In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays.

  David Landes

  Positive, Success, Attitude

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• When a man imagines, even after years of striving, that he has attained perfection, his decline begins.

  Theodore Martin

  Men, Years, Perfection

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• What you dislike in another take care to correct in yourself.

  Thomas Sprat

  Inspirational, Hard Work, Self Improvement

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• If the Commission is to enquire into the conditions "to be observed," it is to be presumed that they will give the result of their enquiries; or, in other words, that they will lay down, or at least suggest, "rules" and "conditions to be (hereafter) observed" in the construction of bridges, or, in other words, embarrass and shackle the progress of improvement to-morrow by recording and registering as law the prejudices or errors of to-day. [Objecting to any interference by the State with the freedom of civil engineers in the conduct of their professional work.]

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  Errors, Law, Bridges

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• If you forget you have to struggle for improvement you go backward.

  Geoff Hickson

  Motivational, Struggle, Self Improvement

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• Industry, economy, honesty and kindness form a quartet of virtue that will never be improved upon.

  Jamie Oliver

  Honesty, Kindness, Virtue

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• Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer. Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Suicide, Self Harm, Fall

  Chuck Palahniuk (2005). “Fight Club: A Novel”, p.49, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Frequently, I have been asked if an experiment I have planned is pure or applied science; to me it is more important to know if the experiment will yield new and probably enduring knowledge about nature. If it is likely to yield such knowledge, it is, in my opinion, good fundamental research; and this is more important than whether the motivation is purely aesthetic satisfaction on the part of the experimenter on the one hand or the improvement of the stability of a high-power transistor on the other.

  William Shockley

  Motivation, Knowledge, Science

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• From the physician, as emphatically the student of Nature, is expected not only an inquiry into cause, but an investigation of the whole empire of Nature and a determination of the applicability of every species of knowledge to the improvement of his art.

  John Gorrie

  Art, Determination, Knowledge

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• Increased knowledge of heredity means increased power of control over the living thing, and as we come to understand more and more the architecture of the plant or animal we realize what can and what cannot be done towards modification or improvement.

  Reginald Punnett

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

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• This example illustrates the differences in the effects which may be produced by research in pure or applied science. A research on the lines of applied science would doubtless have led to improvement and development of the older methods - the research in pure science has given us an entirely new and much more powerful method. In fact, research in applied science leads to reforms, research in pure science leads to revolutions, and revolutions, whether political or industrial, are exceedingly profitable things if you are on the winning side.

  Joseph John Thomson

  Powerful, Science, Winning

  Attributed in "The Life of Sir J. J. Thomson" by Lord Rayleigh, (p. 199), 1943.

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• 1. Stress improvement, not perfection (or winning). 2. Don't take yourself too seriously; laugh at yourself and have fun. 3. Set attainable goals; reach them and then set higher ones. 4. Be positive, walk tall, smile often, don't complain or procrastinate. 5. Prepare purposely, but don't overtrain. 6. Remember- Sports is a game and meant to be enjoyable.

  Dick Gould

  Sports, Running, Fun

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• Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Vanity, Self

  Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.191, New World Library

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• To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Criticism, Steps

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.3, Hayes Barton Press

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• The beginning of civilisation is the discovery of some useful arts, by which men acquire property, comforts, or luxuries. The necessity or desire of preserving them leads to laws and social institutions. The discovery of peculiar arts gives superiority to particular nations ... to subjugate other nations, who learn their arts, and ultimately adopt their manners;- so that in reality the origin as well as the progress and improvement of civil society is founded in mechanical and chemical inventions.

  Humphry Davy

  Art, Science, Reality

  Sir Humphry Davy (1840). “Salmonia: or, Days of fly-fishing; in a series of conversations: with some account of the habits of fishes belonging to the genus Salmo. Consolation in travel, or, The last days of a philosopher”, p.351

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• There's a difference between making incremental improvements and making sweeping changes that take you away from your core values.

  Tony Dungy

  Leadership, Football, Nfl

  Tony Dungy (2011). “Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life”, p.180, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world improve a sense of its natural beauties upon us. Like poor Falstaff, although I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have know from my infancy - their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with superhuman fancy.

  John Keats

  Death, Flower, Thinking

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• It is difficult for me to believe that quantum mechanics, working very well for currently practical set-ups, will nevertheless fail badly with improvements in counter efficiency.

  John Stewart Bell

  Believe, Failing, Terrorism

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• Just because I accept you as you are does not mean that I have given up all hope of your improvement.

  Ashleigh Brilliant

  Mean, Heartless, Doe

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• The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Politics, Association, Firsts

  Thomas Jefferson “Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson”, Lulu.com

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• The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Ideas, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.318

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