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Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be. - Joseph Campbell |
Follow your bliss. - Joseph Campbell |
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The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. - Joseph Campbell |
A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. - Frank Capra |
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Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success. - Dale Carnegie |
Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse. - James Carswell |
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No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive. - John Cassavetes |
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. - Francois Rene Chateaubriand |
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One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak. - G. K. Chesterton |
When the way comes to an end, then change -
having changed, you pass through. - I Ching |
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I am easily satisfied with the best. - Winston Churchill |
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time steady eye. - Winston Churchill |
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True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information. - Winston Churchill |
Success is never final, failure is never fatal, it's courage that counts. - Winston Churchill |
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Great opportunity is usually disguised as unsolvable problems. - Gretchen G. Clement. |
Creativity is the process of discovering something you did not start out with. - Collingwood |
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Music is the art of thinking with sounds. - Jules Combarie |
Four dimensions of creativity: creation, productivity, originality, and expressiveness. The courage to take risks and persistence are the key characteristics of the creative person. The other characteristics are repeated patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving - from Eli Lilly and Company |
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We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. (Response to the music of "The Beatles" in 1962) - Decca Recording Company |
Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll understand. - Confucius |
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A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cokies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make. - Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mst Field's Cookies |
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more comomn than unsuccessful men without talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. - Calvin Coolidge |
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Even the woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head and keeps pecking away until he finished the job he started. - Coleman Cox |
No one travels so high as he who knows not where he is going. - Oliver Cromwell |
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There's as much risk in doing nothing as in doing something. - Trammell Crow |
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Madame Curie |
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Do not fear mistakes. There are none. - Miles Davis |
What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough. - Eugene Delacroix |
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When asked what single event was most helpful in developing the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied, "Figuring out how to think about the problem". - W. Edwards Deming |
Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable 2) Everybody resists change. - W. Edwards Deming |
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Knowledge needs to be a verb. - W. Edwards Denning |
A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved. - John Dewey |
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The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. - Charles Dickens |
Write as if you are dying. - Annie Dillard |
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Creativity is the ability to see relationships where none exist. - Thomas Disch |
The best way to predict the future is to create it - Peter Drucker |
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Genius is (1%) one percent inspiration, and (99%) ninety-nine percent perspiration. - Thomas Edison |
I'll try anything...I'll even try Limburger cheese! - Thomas Edison |
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Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits - Thomas Edison |
There's a way to do it better...find it - Thomas Edison |
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Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and it looks like work. - Thomas Edison |
Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged. - Thomas Edison |
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The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is good as dead. - Albert Einstein |
If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research would it? - Albert Einstein |
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The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them. - Albert Einstein |
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen. - Albert Einstein |
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The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. - Albert Einstein |
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds - Albert Einstein |
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1. Out of clutter, find simplicity. 2. From discord, find harmony. 3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity (Three rules of work) - Albert Einstein |
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein |
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The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no new ideas. - Albert Einstein |
Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein |
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Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters comapred to what lies within us - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die. - Ralph Waldo Emerson |
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Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can't, you're absolutely right. - Henry Ford |
The more you think, the more time you have. - Henry Ford |
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Indecision is often worse than wrong action. - Gerald Ford |
In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. - E. M. Forster |
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Simplicity, carried to an extreme, becomes elegant. - Jon Franklin |
Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose. - Viktor Frankyl |
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To take the difficulties, setback and sorrows of life as a challenge
which to overcome makes us stronger rather than unjust punishment which
should not happen to us requires faith and courage - Erich Fromm |
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.
- Julius Sextus Frontinus |
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Ideas are easy to come by; reduction to practice is an arduous but inspirationally rewarding matter. - Buckminster Fuller |
It is not how smart you are; but how you are smart - Howard Gardner |
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640K [memory] ought to be enough for anybody - 1981: Bill Gates |
I shut my eyes in order to see. - Paul Gauguin |
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One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. - Andr'e Gide |
Persistance is the hard work that you do after you are tired of doing the hard work you already did. - Newt Gingrich |
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It's not where we stand but in what direction we are moving. - Goethe |
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. - Goethe |
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No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe. - Harry Gray |
To live is to have problems and to solve problems is to grow intellectually - J. P. Guilford |
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It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end. - Ursula K. Le Guin |
In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Simonton found that the most respected produced not only more great works, but also more "bad" ones. They produced. Period. - Doug Hall |
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You lose it if you talk about it. - Ernest Hemingway |
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun. - Katherine Hepburn |
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There is nothing permanent except change
(450 BC) - Heraclitus |
One cannot step twice into the same river. - Heraclitus |
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It's the job of a manager not to light the fire of motivation, but to create an environment to let each person's personal spark of motivation blaze. - Frederick Herzberg |
Man's mind stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions. - Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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To me, success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents 1 percent of your work and results from the 99 percent that is called failure. - Soichiro Honda |
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. - Grace Hopper |
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No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. - Edward Hopper |
The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity. - Victor Hugo |
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We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. - Lee Iacocca |
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism. - Dean William R. Inge |
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The art of becoming wise is the art of knowing where to overlook. - William James |
In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start. - William James |
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Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. - William James |
Inventions become perfect by slow improvement, and each step is itself an invention. - Joseph Jastrow |
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Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance. - Thomas Jefferson |
You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best. - Steve Jobs |
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It's simple, you just take something and do something to it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've got something. - Jasper Johns |
Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind. - Samuel Johnson |
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A man's errors are his portals of discovery. - James Joyce |
A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.
- Nikos Kazantzakis |
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Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, not do the chiuldren of humankind as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outight exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing at all. - Helen Keller |
When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity. - John F. Kennedy |
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A lot of disappointed people have been left standing on the street corner waiting for the bus marked Perfection. - Donald Kennedy |
The world hates change yet it is the only thing that has brought progress - Charles Kettering |
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If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it. - Charles Kettering |
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress. - Charles Kettering |
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My interest is in the future, because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there. - Charles Kettering |
Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. - Arthur Koestler |
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If the Creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out. - Arthur Koestler |
The map is not the territory - Alfred Korzbyski |
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Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly. - Dr Edwin Land |
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. - Dr. Edwin Land |
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A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms grows from a downy tip; A terrace nine storeys high rises from hodfuls of earth; A journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath one's feet. - Lao-Tzu |
Where do you get your ideas? has always been the question I'm most often confronted with. (Why do you get your ideas? is a close second). I don't know where my ideas come from....however...one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple of cups of coffee into me and things just start to happen. - Gary Larson |
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The idea for any cartoon (my experience, anyway) is rarely spontaneous. Good ideas usually evolve out of
pretty lame ones, and vice versa. - Gary Larson |
The difference between the impossible and possible lies in a person's determination. - Tommy Lasorda |
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The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things - Abraham Lincoln |
Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything. - George Lois |
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Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. - Vince Lombardi |
In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak. - James Russell Lowell |
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It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection. - Thomas Macaulay |
I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a good book. - Groucho Marx |
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Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. - W. Somerset Maugham |
The obvious is always least understood - Prince Metternich |
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One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. - A. A. Milne |
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. - Charles Mingus |
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The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word... - N. Scott Momaday |
I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain. When I felt I held enough cards I determined to pass to action, and did so. - Claude Monet |
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Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. - Hannah More |
I never stop studying. There's always lots to learn. When you stop learning, that's about the end of you. - John Morton-Finney |
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It's not enought to visualise a positive result; it's much better to plan how you're going to get there. - Shane Murphy |
To be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid. - Yaqui Mystic |
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If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton |
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. - Friedrich Nietzsche |
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Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away. - Earl Nightingale |
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin |
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin |
Open your mind up to things that have no connection with the problem you're trying to solve: subscribe to an unusual magazine; spend a morning at an elementary school; go to work two hours early; test drive an exotic car; attend a city council meeting;...try an Indonesian recipe. - Roger von Oech |
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Something is wrong if workers do not look around each day, find things that are tedious or boring, and then rewrite the procedures. Even last month's manual should be out of date - Toyota: Taichi Ohno |
As in the piling up of hypothetical alternatives, creative accidents follow the law of probabilities - the more we fish, the more likely we are to get a strike. - Alex Osborn |
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Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction. - Pierre Pachet |
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
(1899) - Commissioner of Patents |
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The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas - Linus Pauling |
The only joy in the world is to begin. - Cesare Pavese |
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It doesn't matter what product or service you're offering; there is unlimited ability to improve the quality of anything. - Tom Peters |
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso |
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I do not seek. I find. (Je ne cherche pas; je trouve) - Pablo Picasso |
It is the function of creative man to perceive and to connect the seemingly unconnected. - William Plommer |
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Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. - Norman Podhoretz |
All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. - Edgar Allen Poe |
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There are no secrets to success; don't waste time looking for them. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty to those for whom you work, and persistence. - Colin Powell |
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes. - Marcel Proust |
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The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it. - Chinese Proverb |
Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself. - Chinese Proverb |
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Being an expert is more than understanding how a system is supposed to work. Expertise is gained by investigating why a system doesn't work. - Brian Redman |
People learn more from observation that they do from conversation. - Will Rogers |
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The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn ... and change. - Carl Rogers |
Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers |
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Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well - Jim Rohn |
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. - Ned Rorem |
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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. - Darrell Royal |
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. - David Russell |
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Be master of mind rather than mastered by mind. - Zen saying |
Neccesity is the mother of invention, it is true -- but is father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife. - Jonathan Schattke |
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The notes I handle no better than many pianists, But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides! - Arthur Schnabel |
A learning organisation is one that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future. - Peter Senge |
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The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. - George Bernard Shaw |
Few people think more than two or three times a year. I've made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week - Goerge Bernard Shaw |
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Some men see things as they are and say, why. I dream things that never were and say, why not. - George Bernard Shaw. |
Musical comedies aren't written, they are re-written. - Stephen Sondheim |
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Look and you will find it - what is unsought will go undetected. - Sophocles |
The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. - Saul Steinberg |
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Doodling is the brooding of the mind. - Saul Steinberg |
There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions - Charles Steinmetz |
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Every exit is an entry somewhere else. - Tom Stoppard |
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. - Igor Stravinsky |
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Foraging is collecting information; being on the outlook and exploring your environment for new ideas, seeking inspiration through nature, getting an education, developing your abilities and talenbts. - FRANK's Components for Creativity and Success |
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few. - Shunryu Suzuki |
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To do two things at once is to do neither. - Publilius Syrus |
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing. - Publilius Syrus |
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A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi |
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi |
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Go - not knowing where. Bring - not knowing what. The path is long, the way unknown - Russian Fairy Tale |
If the going is easy, beware! You may be going downhill - Greg Taunt |
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Your questions indicate the depth of your belief. Look at the depth of your questions. - John & Lyn St. Clair Thomas |
Our life is frittered away by detail...
Simplify, Simplify - Henry Thoreau |
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We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action. - Frank Tibolt |
Change is not merely necessary to life - IT IS LIFE. - Alvin Toffler |
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The strongest of all warriors are these two - time and patience.
- Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy |
Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. - Leadership ... with a human touch |
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A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. - Mark Twain |
Aim at nothing and you will hit it every time - Unknown |
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If Columbus had turned back, no one would have blamed him. No one would have remembered him either. - Unknown |
The mind is like a parachure - it only works when it is open. - Unknown |
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Aim at nothing and you will hit it every time. - Unknown |
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be
kindled - Unknown |
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The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to discover places no one has ever been before. - Unknown |
If you aren't the lead dog, the view never changes. - Unknown |
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An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it. - Unknown |
Well begun is half done. - Unknown |
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I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engaged my thought throughout my life. - Leondardo da Vinci |
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. - Voltaire |
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The art of creation is older than the art of killing. - Andrei Voznesensky |
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? (spoken in 1927) - Warner Brother's H. M. Warner |
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I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. - Thomas Watson |
Remove the word "problem" from your vocabulary and replace it with "challenge". Life will suddenly become a lot more interesting and enjoyable. - Donna Watson |
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Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached. - Simone Weil |
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important - and then get out of their way while they do it. - CEO of General Electric: Jack Welch |
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Failure can be a stepping stone to success - it's never too late. - Dr Ralph Wells |
I am a writer who came from a sheltered life.
A sheltered life can be daring as well. For all serious daring starts from within. - Eudora Welty |
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We think in generalities, but we live in detail. - Alfred North Whitehead |
The "silly question" is the first intimation of some totally new development. - Alfred North Whitehead |
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Every really new idea looks crazy at first - Alfred North Whitehead | Do or do not, there is no try (Empire Strikes Back) - Yoda |
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Without deviation, progress is not possible. - Frank Zappa |
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Updated on 30th June 1999