Favorite Quotations

It is impossible to be a maverick or a true original if you’re too well behaved and don’t want to break the rules. You have to think outside the box. That’s what I believe. After all, what is the point of being on this earth if all you want to do is be liked by everyone and avoid trouble?

– Arnold Schwarzenegger

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

– John F. Kennedy

We choose to go to the Moon! … We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win …

– John F. Kennedy - September 12, 1962

Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.

– Jack London - March 1903

If you’re pushing you edge… Eventually you find the edge.

– Jimmy Chin

The right people well placed within the right organizational framework can make a difference; so can the right influences and mentors.

– Harold Brown, Star Spangled Security

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

– George S. Patton

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

– Albert Einstein

If you consciously try to thwart opponents, you are already late.

– Miyamoto Musashi - 1645

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

– Haruki Murakami

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

– Marcus Aurelius

The most dangerous phrase in the language is we've always done it this way.

– Grace Hopper

Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.

– Simon Sinek

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great

– J. D. Rockefeller

Understanding how to act under conditions of incomplete information is the highest and most urgent human pursuit.

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb - 2007