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Post by Tamrin on Mar 8, 2014 6:43:55 GMT 10
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it
Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work
Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led
The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective * The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it * Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right * The manager has his eye on the bottom line; the leader has his eye on the horizon * The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born
People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, second-hand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out
Silence — not dissent — is the one answer that leaders should refuse to acceptWarren G. BennisAmerican scholar, organizational consultant and author (Born this day 1925) Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 8, 2014 6:44:55 GMT 10
The Himalayas are the crowning achievement of the Indo-Australian plate. India in the Oligocene crashed head on into Tibet, hit so hard that it not only folded and buckled the plate boundaries but also plowed into the newly created Tibetan plateau and drove the Himalayas five and a half miles into the sky
The mountains are in some trouble. India has not stopped pushing them, and they are still going up. Their height and volume are already so great they are beginning to melt in their in their own self-generated radioactive heat
When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth
If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone
Rocks are records of events that took place at the time they formed. They are books. They have a different vocabulary, a different alphabet, but you learn how to read them
If you free yourself from the conventional reaction to a quantity like a million years, you free yourself a bit from the boundaries of human time. And then in a way you do not live at all, but in another way you live forever
But you have to face the fact that if you are going to have an industrial society you must have places that will look terrible. Other places you set aside to say, 'This is the way it was'John McPheeAmerican Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (creative non-fiction) (Born this day 1931) I used to sit in class and listen to the terms come floating down the room like paper airplanes
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 8, 2014 6:45:47 GMT 10
In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different order from eighteenth- or nine- teenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us
The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming ... [some beliefs are] fanatical not because they are "false", but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false
The language of the mentally ill, most obviously "un-sane," is almost totally intens- ional and connotative. This is the language that does not correspond to anything "out there," and this is, in fact, how and perhaps even why the user is mentally ill
A person suffering from paranoid schizophrenia might use perfectly "correct" English in an unassailably "logical" way, but the problem with his language is that it does not correspond to anything "out there"
A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided
One of the insidious facts about totalitarianism is its seeming "efficiency." ... Democracy — with all of its inefficiency — is still the best system we have so far for enhancing the prospects of our mutual survival
The way to be liberated from the constraining effects of any medium is to develop a perspective on it — how it works and what it doesNeil PostmanAmerican educator, media theorist and cultural critic (Born this day 1931) One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of "crap”
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 8, 2014 6:46:46 GMT 10
There are two kinds of restrictions upon human liberty — the restraint of law and that of custom. No written law has ever been more binding than unwritten custom supported by public opinion
This world taught woman nothing skillful and then said her work was valueless. It permitted her no opinions and said she did not know how to think. It forbade her to speak in public, and said the sex had no orators
In the adjustment of the new order of things, we women demand an equal voice; we shall accept nothing less
Everybody counts in applying democracy. And there will never be a true democracy until every responsible and law-abiding adult in it, without regard to race, sex, color or creed has his or her own inalienable and unpurchasable voice in government
The answer to one is the answer to all. Government by “the people” is expedient or it is not. If it is expedient, then obviously all the people must be included
There are whole precincts of voters in this country whose united intelligence does not equal that of one representative American woman
When a just cause reaches its flood tide — whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming powerCarrie Chapman CattAmerican suffragist (Died this day 1947) To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 8, 2014 6:51:17 GMT 10
All wisdom ends in paradox
Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind
I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will
I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered
In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable
Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It`s always there, though
In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of lifeJeffrey EugenidesAmerican novelist and short story writer ( Middlesex) (Born this day 1960) Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:36:23 GMT 10
Sunday’s Quotes:Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed
To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous
It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world
A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace
It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent so much as the smallness of his wants
Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted
Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talentWilliam CobbettEnglish politician, agriculturist and journalist (Born this day 1763) Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:37:41 GMT 10
All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have held reality down fluttering to a bench
She walks among the loveliness she made, between the apple- blossom and the water — She walks among the patterned pied brocade, each flower her son, and every tree her daughter
I came from nowhere, and shall be strong, steadfast, swift, eternally: I am a lion, a stone, a tree, And as the Polar star in me is fixed my constant heart on thee. Ah, may I stay forever blind with lions, tigers, leopards, and their kind
The greater cats with golden eyes stare out between the bars. Deserts are there, and the different skies, and night with different stars. They prowl the aromatic hill, and mate as fiercely as they kill, to roam, to live, to drink their fill; but this beyond their wit know I: Man loves a little, and for long shall die
Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind
Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom
Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubtVita Sackville-WestEnglish novelist and poet ( The Land) (Born this day 1892) I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:40:08 GMT 10
I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney
Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book
Those big-shot writers ... could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar
I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends
Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents, but still... you look at all this stuff with a grain of salt
If the public likes you, you're good. Shakespeare was a common, down-to-earth writer in his day
If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writesMickey SpillaneAmerican mystery writer (Mike Hammer) (Born this day 1918) I don't care what the editor likes or dislikes, I care what the people like
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:45:02 GMT 10
One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap
The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched
In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed
Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense
No nation, savage or civilized, save only the United States of America, has confessed its inability to protect its women save by hanging, shooting, and burning alleged offenders
The negro has suffered far more from the commission of this crime against the women of his race by white men than the white race has ever suffered through his crimes
What becomes a crime deserving capital punishment when the tables are turned is a matter of small moment when the negro woman is the accusing partyIda B Wells-BarnettAfrican-American journalist, editor and anti-lynching campaigner(Died this day 1931) Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so
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Post by Tamrin on Mar 9, 2014 7:46:21 GMT 10
Let's go!(before blast off) I see Earth! It is so beautiful
Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, grad- ually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich
People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!
I looked and looked but I didn't see God
I could have gone on flying through space forever
When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear. I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!Yuri GagarinRussian cosmonaut, first human in space (Born this day 1934) I am a friend, comrades, a friend!
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