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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
“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

IMAGINATION
"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
“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
“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
“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

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
“What we do not understand we have no right to judge.”
- Henri Frederic Amiel

KINDNESS
"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
“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

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
"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

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

LIFE
“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
"The darkest night since the beginning of time did not turn out a single star."
- Unknown

LIMITATIONS
“No matter what our circumstances, our greatest limitation isn’t the leader above us—it’s the spirit within us.”
- John Maxwell

LISTENING
“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
"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
“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