You will find many very different people below. Some of them may believe in or have stood for things you don’t agree with. Some of them are people who believe in or stood for things I don’t agree with either.
But I don’t believe in some puritanical idea that a person’s wisdom is invalidated by beliefs you disagree with, no matter how strongly. Follow that path to it’s end and it is the same as saying that if a person disagrees with you on anything you consider important enough, that person loses their right to speak.
Instead, I believe wisdom can come from many places, and considering the source shouldn’t be the same as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Many people who aren’t perfect have something profound to say. These quotes mean something to me, and I hope they will make you think too.
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Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself. – Honore de Balzac
You can not always control circumstances, but you can control your own thoughts. – Tony Dungy
Change your thoughts and you change the world. – Norman Vincent Peale
No one ever finds life worth living—he has to make it worth living. – Winston Churchill
Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble . . . . [It] is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality . . . a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict. – Eugene H Peterson
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. – Abraham Lincoln
Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions. – Dag Hammarskjold
Character is destiny. – Heraclitus
You can not dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. – James A Froude
Character is power; it makes friends, draws patronage and support and opens the way to wealth, honor and happiness. – John Howe
Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are to some extent a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it piece by piece—by thought, choice, courage and determination. – John Luther
He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times. – Friedrich Schiller
There are seven things that will destroy us: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics. – Mahatma Gandhi
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflections. – Thomas Paine
Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself! – Confucius
Get to know two things about a man – how he earns his money and how be spends it – and you have the clue to his character, for you have a searchlight that shows up the innermost recesses of his soul. You know all you need to know about his standards, his motives, his driving desires, and his real religion. – Robert J McCracken
Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right. – Ezra Taft Benson
So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge. – Cicero
Neither shall you allege the example of the many as an excuse for doing wrong. – Exodus
Re-examine all that you have been told . . . dismiss that which insults your soul. – Walt Whitman
Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right, decide on what you think is right and stick to it. – George Eliot
Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility . . . . In the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take on responsibility. – Michael Korda
The price of greatness is responsibility. – Winston Churchill
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. – Jim Rohn
The first and best victory is to conquer yourself. – Plato
It is not enough to have great qualities; We should also have the management of them. – Francois de La Rochefoucauld
We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else. – Henry Ward Beecher
Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power. – Lao Tzu
Rule your mind or it will rule you. – Horace
The individual who wants to reach the top must appreciate the might and force of habit. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him—and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires. – J Paul Getty
Never suffer your courage to exert itself in fierceness, your resolution in obstinacy, your wisdom in cunning, nor your patience in sullenness and despair. – Charles Palmer
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. – Anne Dillard
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. – Frederick Beuchner
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. – Carlos Castenada
A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back. – Abigail Van Buren
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. – Albert Einstein
Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down within incredible swiftness. – Eliot Spitzer
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands. – Anne Frank
I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. – Keshavan Nair
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. – Barry Lopez
The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping. – Izaak Walton
To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform. – Theodore H White
The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can. – Socrates
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it. – Marcus Aurelius
One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. – Maya Angelou
Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself. – Blaise Pascal
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. – Mahatma Ghandi
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. — Samuel Johnson
What is left when honor is lost? — Publilius Syrus
Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself. – Henry Ward Beecher
Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all happiness and growth occurs in the climb. – Andy Rooney
If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. –John Heywood
Unless you are prepared to give up something valuable you will never be able to truly change at all, because you’ll be forever in the control of things you can’t give up. – Andy Law
Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. — Confucius
History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. – B.C. Forbes
You can learn from anyone, even your enemy. – Ovid
He who stops being better stops being good. – Oliver Cromwell
He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress. – Anwr Sadat
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. – Charles Frederic Dubois
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential? – Jane Wagner
The deepest human defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become. – Ashley Montagu
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. – Anais Nin