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IDEALS
“Ideals are like the stars – we never reach them but like mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them.”
- Charles Schurz
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
- G.K. Chesterton
IDEALISM VS. REALISM
"Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension."
- Rick Warren
IDEAS
“It is not men that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; men die.”
- Woodrow Wilson
“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”
- Walter Bagehot
“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.”
- William J. Cameron
“The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?”
- Dale Carnegie
“Nothing is so corrupting as a great idea whose time is past.”
- John P. Girer
“Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.”
- E.L. Simpson
“The power of an idea can be measured by the degree of resistance it attracts.”
- David Yoho
“Even the best ideas will rarely work unless you do. Many brilliant ideas have washed out simply because there just wasn’t enough elbow grease and legwork put behind them.”
- Milton Rockmore
"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come."
- Victor Hugo
“Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
"Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?"
- Joseph Stalin
IDENTIFICATION
“It is sweet to remember that the exaltation of Christ in heaven is a representative exaltation. He is exalted at the Father's right hand, and though as Jehovah He had eminent glories, in which finite creatures cannot share, yet as the Mediator, the honours which Jesus wears in heaven are the heritage of all the saints. It is delightful to reflect how close is Christ's union with His people. We are actually one with Him; we are members of His body; and His exaltation is our exaltation.”
- Charles Spurgeon
IDENTITY
"Moses spent forty years thinking he was somebody; forty years learning he was nobody; and forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody."
- D.L. Moody
IDLENESS
“I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.”
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.”
- Henry Ford
IGNORANCE
“Men blaspheme what they do not know.”
- Blaise Pascal
IMAGINATION
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
- Stephen R. Covey
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
IMITATION
“Never take others for your example in the tasks you have to perform, however holy they may be, for the devil will set their imperfections before you. But imitate Christ, who is supremely perfect and supremely holy, and you will never err.
- St. John of the Cross
IMPOSSIBILITIES
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- Walt Disney
“Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”
- Louis D. Brandeis
IMPROVEMENT
"There’s a better way to do it. Find it!"
- Thomas A Edison
INDISPENSABILITY
“Graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
- Charles de Gaulle
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles de Gaulle
INDIVIDUAL EFFORT
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help of God, I will do."
- Edward Everett Hale
INEXPERIENCE
“The arrogance of the young is a direct result of not having known enough consequences. The turkey that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Thanksgiving.”
- Harry Golden
INFERIORITY
"No one can make you feel inferior without your permission."
- Elanor Roosevelt
INFORMATION
“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”
- Benjamin Disraeli
INFLUENCE
"A life isn't significant except for its impact on other lives." -
- Jackie Robinson
"The important thing to remember is that if you don't have that inspired enthusiasm that is contagious -- whatever you do have is also contagious."
- Danny Cox
"Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man."
- Thomas Alva Edison
"It is wisdom to use your influence. It is criminal to sell it."
- Ed Cole
INITIATIVE
“Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
- Dwight David Eisenhower
“If you travel the earth, you will find it is largely divided into two classes of people—people who say ‘I wonder why such and such is not done” and people who say “Now who is going to prevent me from doing that thing?’”
- Winston Churchill
“Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field and hope that the cow will back up to them.”
- Albert Hubert
“The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things.”
- Charles M. Schwab
INQUIRY
“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
- Chinese Proverb
INSANITY
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein
INTEGRITY
“Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder.”
- George Washington
“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
- George Washington
“Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.”
- Thomas Jefferson
“The time is always right to do what is right.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
“In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.”
- Warren Buffet
"Integrity is not a 90 percent thing, not a 95 percent thing; either you have it or you don't."
- Peter Scotese
"Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right, and stick to it."
- George Eliot
"He errs, as other men do, but he errs with integrity."
- Benjamin Franklin (speaking of George Washington)
"Image is what people think we are. Integrity is what we really are."
- John Maxwell
"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what I light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Integrity is one of several paths. It distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path, and the only one upon which you will never get lost."
- M.H. McKee
"Nothing can be truly great which is not right."
- Samuel Johnson
"A great business is seldom if ever built up, except on the lines of strictest integrity."
- Andrew Carnegie
"He is most cheated who cheats himself."
- Leonard Drozd
To see that my adversary gives me my rights is natural; but…from our Lord’s standpoint it does not matter if I am defrauded or not; what does matter is that I do not defraud.
– Oswald Chambers
INTELLECT
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
- Albert Einstein
INTELLECTUAL
“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”
- Dwight David Eisenhower
INTELLECTUALISM
"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
INTELLIGENCE
"Anyone who endeavors to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened. You are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all."
- C.S. Lewis
INTENTIONS
"An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention."
- Thomas Aquinas
INVITATION
"My job is simply to proclaim the Gospel, and to let the Spirit of God apply in the individual hearts. When I give the invitation for people to receive Christ it will be so quiet you can hear a pin drop. And you will see people coming forward deliberately, quietly, reverently, thoughtfully, and many of their lives. . . . will have been transformed and changed in that moment."
- Billy Graham
INVOLVEMENT
"The best fertilizer is the owner’s footprint."
- South Carolina Saying
ISOLATION
“I know of no more potent killer than isolation. There is no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them. It has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, murder, and wide variety of disease states.”
- Professor Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University
"The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps."
- Charles H. Parkhurst
“In evangelical individualism people think of their personal relationship with God in isolation (‘Just me and Jesus’) and forge their destiny apart from any church authority. While holding relatively low opinions of history, traditions, and the church, they turn to the experiences of self and isolate themselves from their brothers and sisters in the faith. True spirituality is perverted as it becomes a quest for inner stimulation rather than growth in biblical knowledge and the application of truth in community. Healthy Christians do not live in isolation.”
- Michael G. Moriarty
JEALOUSY
“Jealous leaders measure their success by the failure of others.”
- Andy Stanley
JOY
"Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."
- Teilhard de Chardin
JUDGEMENT
“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”
- Mark Twain
“What we do not understand we have no right to judge.”
- Henri Frederic Amiel
KINDNESS
"Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak."
- Jonathan Edwards
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
- Blaise Pascal
“The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid.”
- Unknown
“Often the only thing a child can remember about an adult in later years, when he or she is grown, is whether or not that person was kind.”
- Billy Graham
“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people. Now I admire kind people.”
- Abraham Heschel
"When I was learned, knowledge was everything. Now that I'm a learner, kindness is everything."
- Leonard Sweet
“Always be a littler kinder than necessary.”
- James M. Barrie
"I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again."
- William Penn
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
- Plato
"I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not better off for it."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Three things in life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.
- Henry James
"Kindness makes a person attractive. If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it."
- Alexander Maclaren
"More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world."
- William Barclay
"Men are only great as they are kind."
- Elbert Hubbard
KNOWLEDGE
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
- Oscar Wilde
“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”
- Johann Goethe
“We don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything.”
- Thomas Edison
"Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are the most important."
- Jonathan Edwards
"There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men."
- Lee Iacocca
KNOWING GOD
“I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.”
- Henri Nouwen
LABELS
“Don’t rely too much on labels; Far too often they are fables.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon
LAUGHING
"You don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing."
- Michael Pritchard
“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
- Abraham Lincoln
LAW
"The Law can only chase a man to Calvary, no further.”
- D.L. Moody
LEADERSHIP
“The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
- Winston Churchill
“Our responsibility is one of decision, for to govern is to choose.”
-
John F. Kennedy
“We don’t want to be like the leader in the French Revolution who said, ‘There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.’”
-
John F. Kennedy
“It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.”
-
John F. Kennedy
"Great leadership occurs when you understand your own motives, your "dark side", what you want to misrepresent in order to look better than you really are."
- Nancy Ortberg
“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you're in control, they're in control.”
-
Tom Landry
“Leadership is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”
- Tom Landry
“When I was a young boy, I was at a gravel pit with my father and a young man. They had a team of horses and were attempting to pull a load up a steep road. The young man driving the horses was loud and abusive. In response, the animals were hyper and agitated. They worked against each other and, as a result, couldn’t pull the load. With a gentle voice and a gentler touch, my dad calmed the horses and walked them forward with the load. When the horses cooperated, they could do much more than when they didn’t work together. I learned two important lessons that day: (1) Gentleness is a better method of getting cooperation than harshness is; (2) A team can accomplish much more when it works together than individuals can when they work alone.”
- John Wooden
“A leader who takes no cues from the people is a dictator; the leader who tries to satisfy every critic gains neither respect nor effectiveness. Both extremes sabotage pastoral ministry. The pastor is not above criticism, arrogantly above criticism, nor is the pastor a garbage dump, passively accepting the abuse of the disgruntled.”
- Marshall Shelley
“Leadership is action, not position.”
- D. H. McGannon
"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."
- Ronald Reagan
“Making the effort to improve as a human being is what Coach Lombardi was all about. He was able to see the gap between where we were and what we could become—both as football players and as people. And he felt it was his God-given responsibility to close that gap.”
- Jerry Kramer, former Packers guard
“My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull a few weeds, too.”
- Jack Welsh
“The person who knows how will always have a job, but the person who knows why will be his boss.”
- Carl C. Wood
“Ego-centered, ego-prominent leadership betrays the Master. The best leadership in spiritual communities formed in the name of Jesus, the Messiah, is inconspicuous, not calling attention to itself, but not sacrificing anything in the way of conviction and firmness, either. …ill-directed and badly formed spiritual leadership causes much damage in souls.”
- Eugene Peterson (from the introduction to the pastoral epistles in the Message Bible)
"The secret of my success is my ability to attract exceptionally able men and to treat them with so much respect that they never leave."
- Stanley Resor (1879-1962), A giant in the industry, considered to have helped invent modern advertising
“Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration -- of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.”
- Lance Secretan
"A leader is only able to lead others because he disciplines himself. The person who does not know how to bow to discipline imposed from without, who does not know how to obey, will not make a good leader—nor will the one who has not learned to impose discipline within his own life. Those who scorn scripturally or legally constituted authority, or rebel against it, rarely qualify for high leadership positions.”
- Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership
You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you.”
- Tiorio
“If you lead through fear, you will have little to respect; but if you lead through respect, you will have little to fear.”
- Unknown
"A leader is a dealer in hope."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you."
- Bear Bryant
"It’s critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skills. It’s also important to determine whether a person is capable of learning leadership."
- Fred Smith
"He who cannot obey, cannot command."
- Benjamin Franklin
"The leader who can enlist cooperation and respect, without having to pull rank, has power of the most positive kind."
- David Crawley
"Do not trust proud, self-seeking leadership."
- Harold L. Lundquist
"The person who knows how will always have a job. The person who knows why will be boss."
- Carl Wood
"Leadership requires followership and following is an act of trust, faith in the course of the leader, and that faith can be generated only if leaders act with integrity."
- Lawrence Miller
“You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.”
- Jeannette Rankin
‘For some must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay!”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“People prefer to follow those who help them, not those who intimidate them.”
- C. Gene Wilkes
“It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.”
- Harvey S. Firestone
“You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership."
- Colin Powell
LEARNING
"The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after."
- Newton D. Baker
"I am still learning."
- Michaelangelo
"The inlet of a man’s mind is what he learns; the outlet is what he accomplishes. If his mind is not fed by a continued supply of new ideas, which he puts to work with purpose, and if there is no outlet in action, his mind becomes stagnant. Such a mind is a danger to the individual who owns it and is useless to the community."
- Jeremiah W. Jenks
“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”
- W. Edwards Deming
LEGACY
“Great lives do not go out. They go on.”
- Benjamin Harrison
"Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost."
- Robert H. Schuller
LIBERTY
“Our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else. May our faith be...not merely stamped upon our coins, but expressed in our lives.”
- Peter Marshall
“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
- Alexis de Tocqueville
LIES
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
- Mark Twain
"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true."
- Winston Churchill
LIFE
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
- Oscar Wilde
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
- Mark Twain
“Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met - obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.”
-
John F. Kennedy
“I believe the religion of Christ covers the whole man. Why shouldn’t a man play baseball or lawn-tennis? … Don’t imagine that you have got to go into a cave to be consecrated, and stay there all your life. Whatever you take up, take it up with all your heart.”
- Dwight L. Moody
“There is a danger of doing too much as well as of doing too little. Life is not for work, but work for life, and when it is carried to the extent of undermining life or unduly absorbing it, work is not praiseworthy but blameworthy.”
-
Ralph Turnbull
“Today, you have 100% of your life left.”
- Tom Landry
"It has been a grand journey - well-worth living once."
- Winston Churchill
“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”
- Robert Frost
“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
- Sydney J. Harris
“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it!”
- Mother Teresa
LIGHT
“Light physical is said by Solomon to be sweet, but gospel light is infinitely more precious, for it reveals eternal things, and ministers to our immortal natures.”
- Charles H. Spurgeon
"The darkest night since the beginning of time did not turn out a single star."
- Unknown
LIMITS
“Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
- Mark Twain
LIMITATIONS
“No matter what our circumstances, our greatest limitation isn’t the leader above us—it’s the spirit within us.”
- John Maxwell
LISTENING
Retire from the world each day to some private spot. Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God’s presence envelops you. Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them. Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it.
- A.W. Tozer
“The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.”
- Sam Walton
“God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.”
- Francois Fenelon
“Whoever will listen will hear the speaking heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God."
- A.W. Tozer
“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.”
- Shakespeare
“Before we can speak God’s message, we must learn to listen. The opened ear comes before the opened mouth.”
- A.B. Simpson
“The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.’”
- Unknown
“To be able to listen to others in a sympathetic and understanding manner is, perhaps, the most effective mechanism in the world for getting along with people, and tying up their friendship for good.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
“If you can listen well, people will say you’re a good conversationalist.”
- Gil Schwartz
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
- Paul Tillich
"The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them."
- Ralph Nichols
"When you talk, you repeat what you already know; when you listen, you often learn something.
- Jared Sparks
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
- Peter Drucker
LONELINESS
"Loneliness and the feeling of being uncared for and unwanted are the greatest poverty."
- Mother Teresa
LORDSHIP
“God will not accept a divided heart. He must be absolute monarch. There is not room in your heart for two thrones. You cannot mix the worship of the true God with the worship of any other god more than you can mix oil and water. It cannot be done. There is not room for any other throne in the heart if Christ is there. If worldliness should come in, godliness would go out.”
- D.L. Moody
“There is not an inch of any sphere of life over which Jesus Christ does not say, ‘Mine.’”
- Abraham Kuyper
LOSS
“He loseth nothing that loseth not God.”
- George Herbert
LOVE
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
- Oscar Wilde
“No woman or man really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
- Mark Twain
"If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him."
- Dwight L. Moody
- Zig Ziglar
“Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.”
- Blaise Pascal
"Love is a better master than duty."
- Albert Einstein
"The love of God is no mere sentimental feeling; it is redemptive power!"
- Charles Clayton Morrison
“The opposite of biblical love is not hate, it is apathy.”
- Gary Thomas
“If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if I could only make people really believe that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the kingdom of God!”
- Dwight L. Moody
LOYALTY
“There is one element that is worth its weight in gold and that is loyalty. It will cover a multitude of weaknesses.”
- Philip D. Armour
"I have signed on for the voyage and would stick to the ship."
- Winston Churchill
“Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.
- Thomas Carlyle
LUCK
"Shallow men believe in luck and circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Good and bad luck is a synonym in the great majority of instances, for good and bad judgment."
- Winston Churchill
“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard workÅ\and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.
- Lucille Ball
LYING
"How many times do you get to lie before you are a liar?”
- Michael Josephson
