Obedience
- Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.
-- Aristotle
- There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else.
-- Cyrus H. Curtis
- The only safe ruler is he who has learned to obey willingly.
-- Thomas à Kempis
- Obedience alone gives the right to command.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Observation
- You can observe a lot just by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
- As a man is, so he sees.
-- William Blake
- A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
-- William Blake
- Every man who observes vigilantly and resolves steadfastly grows unconsciously into genius.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
- The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
-- Robertson Davies
- It is the theory that decides what can be observed.
-- Albert Einstein
- Each one sees what he carries in his heart.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- If I were to prescribe one process in the training of men which is fundamental to success in any direction, it would be thoroughgoing training in the habit of accurate observation. It is a habit which every one of us should be seeking ever more to perfect.
-- Eugene G. Grace
- We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
-- William Hazlitt
- One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows. Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world of their own minds, as if they were asleep or absent-minded.
-- Heraclitus
- The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And, because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how our failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
-- R. D. Laing
- He alone is an acute observer, who can observe minutely without being observed.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater
- All of us are watchers--of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway--but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing.
-- Peter M. Leschak
- Observation--activity of both eyes and ears.
-- Horace Mann
- Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harder blows, make acute and balanced observers.
-- George Meredith
- One must always tell what one sees. Above all, which is more difficult, one must always see what one sees.
-- Charled Péguy
- He who can take no great interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.
-- John Ruskin
Opinion
- Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
-- Bernard M. Baruch
- I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man--public opinion.
-- Clarence Darrow
- The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion.
-- Elizabeth Drew
- He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
-- Tryon Edwards
- People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself--and how little I deserve it.
-- W. S. Gilbert
- With effervescing opinions, the quickest way to let them get flat is to let them get exposed to the air.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert Humphrey
- Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.
-- Joseph Joubert
- Don't judge a man by his opinions, but by what his opinions have made him.
-- G. C Lichtenberg
- In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.
-- Abraham Lincoln
- New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
-- John Locke
- The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
-- James Russell Lowell
- Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
-- Thomas Mann
- We should never let ourselves be burnt for our opinions; we are not that sure of them. But perhaps for this -- that we may have and change our opinions.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.
-- John Parker
- If you want people to think well of you, do not speak well of yourself.
-- Blaise Pascal
- When I want your opinion I'll give it to you.
-- Laurence J. Peter
- There are as many opinions as there are experts.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-- Bertrand Russel
- Do not chose to be wrong for the sake of being different.
-- Lord Samuel
- Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion--what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
-- Henry David Thoreau
- It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.
-- Mark Twain
- All empty sould tend toward extreme opinions.
-- William Butler Yeats
Opportunity
- A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
-- Francis Bacon
- Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
-- Jean Paul Richter
- Occasions are rare; and those who know how to seize upon them are rarer.
-- Josh Billings
- It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.
-- Arthur H. Vandenberg
- The commonest form, one of the most often neglected, and the safest opportunity for the average man to seize, is hard work.
-- Arthur Brisbane
- You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.
-- Edward S. Martin
- You will never "find" time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
-- Charles Buxton
- Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- The world does not owe men a living, but business, if it is to fulfill its ideal, owes men an opportunity to earn a living.
-- Owen D. Young
Oppression
- The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper and render them more important.
-- Hosea Ballou
- He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine
- No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.
-- Clarence Darrow
- A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
-- Tacitus
- You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-- Booker T. Washington
Optimism
- When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
-- Charled A. Beard
- Optimist: a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Branch Cabell
- For myself I am an optimist--it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
-- Winston Churchill
- An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.
-- Don Marquis
- Do not expect the world to look bright, if you habitually wear gray-brown glasses.
-- Charles Eliot
- So of cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more of it remains.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- An optimist is a fellow who believes what's going to be will be postponed.
-- Kin Hubbard
- The habit of looking on the bright side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
-- Samuel Johnson
- Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-- Helen Keller
- The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes in the morning.
-- Carl Sandburg
- There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.
-- Mark Twain
Order
- A place for everything, everything in its place.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. Life refuses to be embalmed alive.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
- He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.
-- Johann Kaspar Lavater
Originality
- No bird has ever uttered note
That was not in some first bird's throat;
Since Eden's freshness and man's fall
No rose has been original.
-- Thomas Bailey Aldrich
- The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; he believes for himself, not for another.
-- Thomas Carlyle
- All cases are unique and very similar to others.
-- T. S. Eliot
- All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.
-- Clement Greenberg
- Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.
-- Thomas Wentworth Higginson
- When people are fee to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
-- Eric Hoffer
- It is better to create than to be learned, creating is the true essence of life.
-- Barthold Georg Niebuhr
- Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.
-- Ezra Pound
- I invent nothing. I rediscover.
-- Auguste Rodin
- What the world calls originality is only an unaccustomed method of tickling it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- What a good thing Adam had--when he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.
-- Mark Twain
- Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
-- Voltaire
Ostentation
- Pride is the master sin of the devil, and the devil is the father of lies.
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
- An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
-- Joseph Addison
- Ostentation is the signal flag of hypocrisy.
-- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
- Do what good thou canst unknown, and be not vain of what ought rather to be felt than seen.
-- William Penn
- I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
-- Ben Hecht
- The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.
-- William Hutton
- Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.
-- Cicero
- That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.
-- Seneca
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