Firms Motivational Quotes

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We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly - and that is a great thing. Never lose that honesty, Bobby - always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly - and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!
Enid Blyton (Summer Term at St Clare's)
The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.
John Richard Spencer
Firm was my resolve and fragile was my heart. I saw many ends and many a start.
Alok Mishra (Moving for Moksha)
Courage is like magic, courage vanishes crisis.
Amit Kalantri
There's not a lot in this world as motivational as a firm belief in an unbending universal morality which just happens to place you on the side of the angels.
Jeff Mach (There and Never, Ever Back Again: Diary of a Dark Lord)
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don’t be afraid to stand firm on the decisions that you make. Trust yourself. Believe in your instincts. Do what works best for YOU. Stay true to yourself and be good to yourself. Allow every decision that you make to empower, enrich, and add value to your life!
Stephanie Lahart
It's my firm conclusion that human meaning comes from humans, not from a supernatural source. After we die, our hopes for an afterlife reside in the social networks that we influenced while we were alive. If we influence people in a positive way -- even if our social web is only as big as our nuclear family -- others will want to emulate us and pass on our ideas, manners, and lifestyle to future generations. This is more than enough motivation for me to do good things in my life and teach my children to do the same.
Greg Graffin (Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God)
Hour by hour resolve firmly to do what comes to hand with dignity, and with humanity, independence, and justice. Allow your mind freedom from all other considerations. This you can do, if you will approach each action as though it were your last, dismissing the desire to create an impression, the admiration of self, the discontent with your lot. See how little man needs to master, for his days to flow on in quietness and piety: he has but to observe these few counsels, and the gods will ask nothing more.
Marcus Aurelius (Meditations)
To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.
Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change))
Don't let fear of failure prevent you from making effective choices and firm decisions.
Roopleen (Words to inspire the winner in YOU)
She walks to the white board and wheels it round to face him. She writes ‘Motive’ and ‘Suspects’ at the top of the board. She doesn’t turn to look at him but knows his eyes are burning.
M.F. Kelleher (Olivia Streete and the Parisian Contract)
My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein: The 1818 Text)
When you were making excuses someone else was making enterprise.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.
George Orwell (Why I Write)
With discipline, you can lose weight, you can excel in work, you can win the war.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
I was taught the popular folktale of racism: that ignorant and hateful people had produced racist ideas, and that these racist people had instituted racist policies. But when I learned the motives behind the production of many of America’s most influentially racist ideas, it became quite obvious that this folktale, though sensible, was not based on a firm footing of historical evidence. Ignorance/hateracist ideasdiscrimination: this causal relationship is largely ahistorical. It has actually been the inverse relationship—racial discrimination led to racist ideas which led to ignorance and hate. Racial discriminationracist ideasignorance/hate: this is the causal relationship driving America’s history of race relations.
Ibram X. Kendi (Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America)
To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson
Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)
Every hour be firmly resolved... to accomplish the work at hand with fitting and unaffected dignity, goodwill, freedom, justice. Banish from your thoughts all other considerations. This is possible if you perform each act as if it were your last, rejecting every frivolous distraction, every denial of the rule of reason, every pretentious gesture, vain show, and whining complaint against the decrees of fate. Do you see what little is required of a man to live a well-tempered and god-fearing life? Obey these precepts, and the gods will ask nothing more (II.5).
Marcus Aurelius (The Emperor's Handbook)
We might have been ready to offer sympathy, but in actuality there were stronger reasons to want to congratulate her for having found such a powerful motive to feel sad. We should have envied her for having located someone without whom she so firmly felt she could not survive, beyond the gate let along in a bare student bedroom in a suburb of Rio. If she had been able to view her situation from a sufficient distance, she might have been able to recognise this as one of the high points in her life.
Alain de Botton (A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary)
Suppose ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ are just other universes.” “Just other universes,” Eliza repeated, smiling. “And the Big Bang was just an explosion.” Dr. Chaudhary chuckled. “Is another universe bigger or smaller than the idea of God? Does it matter? If there is a sphere where ‘angels’ dwell, is it a matter of semantics, whether we choose to call it Heaven?” “No,” Eliza replied, swiftly and firmly, a bit to her own surprise. “It isn’t a matter of semantics. It’s a matter of motive.” “I beg your pardon?” Dr. Chaudhary gave her a quizzical look. Something in Eliza’s tone had hardened. “What do they want?” she asked. “I think that’s the bigger question. They came from somewhere.” There is another universe. “And if that somewhere has nothing to do with ‘God’ ”—It doesn’t.—“then they’re acting on their own behalf. And that’s scary.
Laini Taylor (Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #3))
Democracy changes its opinions from time to time, philosophy doesn't.
Amit Kalantri
Stubbornness leads to strong will.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Creativity without discipline will struggle, creativity with discipline will succeed.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
All will be annihilated in this age except the one who established in his ways and firm in his thought is
Muhammad Iqbal (Kulliyat-e-Iqbal: Urdu / کلیات اقبال: اردو)
I told you it would be difficult! If I were you I would just not bother trying these tasks! They are great challenges, clearly too great for you.” said Guya, but there was a certain sparkle in his eye as he said it. “I shall complete your tasks, ” said Yoshiko firmly. “And I’ll be back sooner than you think!” With that he spread his wings to head for Fire School. “Oh and one more thing Guya” Yoshiko added. Perhaps when I return you will be so kind as to stop calling me a little dragon!” As Yoshiko flew off Guya chuckled to himself.
Julia Suzuki (Yoshiko and the Gift of Charms (The Land of Dragor))
I am a firm believer that when a person makes mistakes or fails to see the bigger picture, God will remove opportunities from before them.
Lindsey Rietzsch (Successful Failures: Recognizing the Divine Role That Opposition Plays in Life's Quest for Success)
Be firm. Be strong.
Lailah Gifty Akita
The consulting firm McKinsey & Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work.9
Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
Sometimes the best helping hand you can get is a good, firm push.
Joann Thomas
Hold onto your creativity, that idealism that is rooted in some degree of innocence and a firm belief in something finer than the things we already have.
Janvier Chouteu-Chando (The Girl on the Trail)
Hope is firm belief.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
I draw comfort from the notion that nature reveals its motivations only slowly; mysteries within mysteries that keep us arrogant, would-be know-alls firmly in our place.
John Lister-Kaye (Gods of the Morning)
Sometimes, feels flexible is the one makes you falling down on the edge. I'm telling you, be more relevant in some case and you will stand firm!
Shim Steward
Anger is such a devious emotion. It controls even the best of us by a firm grip around the neck, making us say and do things we often come to regret.
Chris Erzfeld
to found a new home in the western continent beyond the ocean, a new fatherland free from tyranny . . . guided by firm convictions and upright motives, not by the whim of the moment.
Michelle Malkin (Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs)
For a migratory bird, there is one supreme truth, “Sky is the freedom.” If it enters into a room by accident, it tries to get out by flying upward. It keeps banging its head against the ceiling. It fails to find the door or windows because it firmly believes that freedom is upward, not sideways. Challenge your existing beliefs no matter how true they seem to you.
Shunya
When you understand your inner self — your passions, motivations, moral code and vulnerabilities, you don’t have to blow in the wind of someone else’s expectations; you can stand firm in your own truth.
Janet Autherine (Island Mindfulness: How to Use the Transformational Power of Mindfulness to Create an Abundant Life)
According to an equally lovingly preserved English translation of the prospectus, the purpose of Ibuka’s firm was “to establish an ideal factory that stresses a spirit of freedom and open-mindedness, and where engineers with sincere motivation can exercise their technological skills to the highest level.” We shall, he pledged, “eliminate any unfair profit-seeking exercises” and “seek expansion not only for the sake of size.” Further, “we shall carefully select employees . . . we shall avoid to have [sic] formal positions for the mere sake of having them, and shall place emphasis on a person’s ability, performance and character, so that each
Simon Winchester (Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers)
pulling a great substance from a higher height whilst leaning on a slippery ground with the mentality of having the substance whilst standing is a thought of fantasy. You may only result in falling with the substance
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it forever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into the mud and slime, in which it was useless to struggle. He had made his ties for himself which robbed him of all wholesome motive and were a constant exasperation.
George Eliot (Silas Marner)
All these beliefs around happiness are created and embedded in us from when we were young. Belief is a firmly held opinion. Beliefs are our motives in life, it’s the “why” for all we do. It is quite strong, and false beliefs are extremely dangerous.
Ani Rich (A Missing Drop: Free Your Mind From Conditioning And Reconnect To Your Truest Self)
The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. You are multitasking, and because the stakes involved are high--survival and success versus failure in an area that is important to you--this multitasking is stressful and distracting. ...And when you realize that this stressful experience is probably a chronic feature of the stetting for you, it can be difficult for you to stay in the setting, to sustain your motivation to succeed there. Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task; something you have to do over and over again as long as your are in the domain where the stereotype applies. Jeff seemed to feel this way about Berkeley, that he couldn't find a place there where he could be seen as belonging. When men drop out of quantitative majors in college, it is usually because they have bad grades. But when women drop out of quantitative majors in college it usually has nothing to do with their grades. The culprit, in their case, is not their quantitative skills but, more likely, the prospect of living a significant portion of their lives in a domain where they may forever have to prove themselves--and with the chronic stress that goes with that. This is not an argument against trying hard, or against choosing the stressful path. There is no development without effort; and there is seldom great achievement, or boundary breaking, without stress. And to the benefit of us all, many people have stood up to these pressures...The focus here, instead, is on what has to be gotten out of he way to make these playing fields mere level. People experiencing stereotype threat are already trying hard. They're identified with their performance. They have motivation. It's the extra ghost slaying that is in their way.
Claude M. Steele (Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us (Issues of Our Time))
As Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. If the church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism will become immeasurably more difficult in the next. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance. For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. Thinking about your faith is indeed a virtue, for it helps you to better understand and defend your faith. But thinking about your faith is not equivalent to doubting your faith. Doubt is never a purely intellectual problem. There is a spiritual dimension to the problem that must be recognized. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in spiritual warfare and there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you. Reason can be used to defend our faith by formulating arguments for the existence of God or by refuting objections. But though the arguments so developed serve to confirm the truth of our faith, they are not properly the basis of our faith, for that is supplied by the witness of the Holy Spirit Himself. Even if there were no arguments in defense of the faith, our faith would still have its firm foundation. The more I learn, the more desperately ignorant I feel. Further study only serves to open up to one's consciousness all the endless vistas of knowledge, even in one's own field, about which one knows absolutely nothing. Don't let your doubts just sit there: pursue them and keep after them until you drive them into the ground. We should be cautious, indeed, about thinking that we have come upon the decisive disproof of our faith. It is pretty unlikely that we have found the irrefutable objection. The history of philosophy is littered with the wrecks of such objections. Given the confidence that the Holy Spirit inspires, we should esteem lightly the arguments and objections that generate our doubts. These, then, are some of the obstacles to answered prayer: sin in our lives, wrong motives, lack of faith, lack of earnestness, lack of perseverance, lack of accordance with God’s will. If any of those obstacles hinders our prayers, then we cannot claim with confidence Jesus’ promise, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it”. And so I was led to what was for me a radical new insight into the will of God, namely, that God’s will for our lives can include failure. In other words, God’s will may be that you fail, and He may lead you into failure! For there are things that God has to teach you through failure that He could never teach you through success. So many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is and always will be the true priority for every human being — that is, learning to know God in Christ. My greatest fear is that I should some day stand before the Lord and see all my works go up in smoke like so much “wood, hay, and stubble”. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but knowledge of God. People tend naturally to assume that if God exists, then His purpose for human life is happiness in this life. God’s role is to provide a comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view, this is false. We are not God’s pets, and the goal of human life is not happiness per se, but the knowledge of God—which in the end will bring true and everlasting human fulfilment. Many evils occur in life which may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness; but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.
William Lane Craig (Hard Questions, Real Answers)
If we allowed ourselves to face and feel the pain in our lives, it would serve its function to get our attention to recognize that we have stepped away from the Tao and we need to get back on course. It is said, “Love how much you hate it.” If you are doing something you find repulsive, or you have had a bad experience, use your disgust as a motivator to change direction. When you are sick of it enough you will do something about it. A Course in Miracles tells us, Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point.
Alan Cohen (The Tao Made Easy: Timeless Wisdom to Navigate a Changing World (Made Easy series))
. . a 2010 study found that when people were shown incorrect information alongside a correction, the update failed to reverse their initial belief in the misinformation. Even worse, partisans who were motivated to believe the original incorrect information became even more firm in their belief in that information after reading a correction, the researchers found.
Whitney Cummings (I'm Fine...And Other Lies)
Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. It isn't. It is easily defined. It is a set of choices about winning. Again, it is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition. Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions: 1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration. 2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration. 3. How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field. 4. What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way. 5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices. These choices and the relationship between them can be understood as a reinforcing cascade, with the choices at the top of the cascade setting the context for the choices below, and choices at the bottom influencing and refining the choices above.
A.G. Lafley (Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works)
The ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was refined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of government. In the church as well as in the world, the persons who were placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in business; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the infusion of spiritual zeal.
Edward Gibbon (The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I)
Divine pride, or remembering one’s ultimate identity as a deity, is qualitatively different from arrogance, for it is not motivated by a sense of deficiency or compensatory self-aggrandisement…. When a woman reclaims her divine identity, she does not seek outer sources of approval, for a firm, unshakable basis for self-esteem emanates from the depths of her own being.
Sera Beak (Red Hot and Holy: A Heretic's Love Story)
So when one person’s attitude changes, the other person is often disappointed, and his own attitude changes as a result. That is a sign that love was motivated more from personal need than from an authentic concern for the loved one. Real compassion is not just an emotional response; it is a firm, thought-out commitment. Therefore, an authentic attitude of compassion does not change, even faced with another person’s negative behavior.
Dalai Lama XIV (My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks)
During these times of stress and strain where society is flooded with negativity and loss of hope for humanity, I have a friendly reminder. I am a firm believer in the particularly special sect in society that happens to be significantly socially educated in modern generations. I want to kindly remind you of the people that grasp hope and humanity firmly in one hand and their neighbor with the other. There is a significant amount of loving and educated people that will be the reason we look back at negative events that occur today in awe. And with so much bigotry and lack of humanity today, we must remember that with no struggle there is no progress. The struggles we experience today are the motives for the progress and accomplishments of tomorrow, remember that. When you encounter social pessimism, remember to set the example for newer generations to come and leave the past to dwell where it belongs.
Ghaleya Aldhafiri
Just because of one or two or few failed relationships, people stop believing in love and some people never even care to look at love in a good way because of what others say, just because of others opinions and judgments. Some say, ‘men are dogs’ and some guys firmly believe ‘women only fall in love with rich men’. No! That’s not true! Not every guy goes after ‘sexy’ girls and not every woman goes after rich men! I want you to stop looking at the world in such a judgmental and horrible way perhaps, it’s not the right way.
Jyoti Patel
She exuded abundant joie de vivre. Her joy was unconfined and unrestrained, it had no rhyme or reason, no grounds or motive, nothing had to happen to make her overflow with jollity. Of course, I sometimes saw her momentarily sad, weeping openly when she thought rightly or wrongly that someone had insulted her, or shamelessly sobbing in a sad film, or crying over a poignant page in a novel. But her sadness was always firmly enclosed within brackets of powerful joy, like hot spring water that no snow or ice could cool because its heat flowed straight from the core of the earth.
Amos Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness)
If you appreciate competence, you will appreciate performance. If you appreciate performance, you will appreciate cleverness. If you appreciate cleverness, you will appreciate brilliance. If you appreciate brilliance, you will appreciate excellence. If you despise laziness, you will despise carelessness. If you despise carelessness, you will despise negligence. If you despise negligence, you will despise amateurishness. If you despise amateurishness, you will despise ineffectiveness. If you cherish alertness, you will cherish attentiveness. If you cherish attentiveness, you will cherish resourcefulness. If you cherish resourcefulness, you will cherish productiveness. If you cherish productiveness, you will cherish progress. If you loathe weakness, you will loathe fearfulness. If you loathe fearfulness, you will loathe cowardliness. If you loathe cowardliness, you will loathe spinelessness. If you loathe spinelessness, you will loathe unproductiveness. If you treasure firmness, you will treasure dominance. If you treasure dominance, you will treasure eminence. If you treasure eminence, you will treasure influence. If you treasure influence, you will treasure confidence.
Matshona Dhliwayo
1. Whenever you walk through a doorway at home, stop, press the palms of your hands flat against the top of the door frame, get up on your toes, then push up with your arms and try to get your heels back on the floor. But don't let them budge - you're pushing against the calf muscles and recontouring them. Hold it for few seconds and then go on about you chores. 2. Sit on a straight chair, point your toes out straight, and kick up as high as you can with each leg. You'll feel a healthy pull in the calf muscles. 3. After a few kicks, stand up on your toes and lower yourself very slowly to a squatting position, still keeping your weight on the balls of your feet. Then pull slowly up again. It’s fair to balance yourself lightly with your hands on the back of a chair if you have to. 4. Put a book on the floor and place the balls of your feet on the book and your heels on the floor. Raise yourself slowly until you’re on tiptoe on the book. Then lower yourself just as slowly. The thicker the book, the better the results/ These four exercises will slim down fat calves and build up thin ones. The point is that the muscles are being firmed, and no matter what your problem the result is lovelier legs.
Joan Crawford (My Way of Life)
I believe that the time is ripe for contemporary Christians to engage in serious reflection on the shape of our eschatology. This eschatology must be grounded firmly in the entire biblical story, beginning with God’s original intent for earthly flourishing and culminating in God’s redemptive purpose of restoring earthly life to what it was meant to be—a purpose accomplished through Christ. We especially need to grapple with the robust ethical implications of this biblical eschatology, exploring how a holistic vision of the future can motivate and ground compassionate yet bold redemptive living in God’s world.
J. Richard Middleton (A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology)
Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs. In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production. Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal. Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness. Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.' Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature. Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World)
Patriotism comes from the same Latin word as father. Blind patriotism is collective transference. In it the state becomes a parent and we citizens submit our loyalty to ensure its protection. We may have been encouraged to make that bargain from our public school education, our family home, religion, or culture in general. We associate safety with obedience to authority, for example, going along with government policies. We then make duty, as it is defined by the nation, our unquestioned course. Our motivation is usually not love of country but fear of being without a country that will defend us and our property. Connection is all-important to us; excommunication is the equivalent of death, the finality we can’t dispute. Healthy adult loyalty is a virtue that does not become blind obedience for fear of losing connection, nor total devotion so that we lose our boundaries. Our civil obedience can be so firm that it may take precedence over our concern for those we love, even our children. Here is an example: A young mother is told by the doctor that her toddler is allergic to peanuts and peanut oil. She lets the school know of her son’s allergy when he goes to kindergarten. Throughout his childhood, she is vigilant and makes sure he is safe from peanuts in any form. Eighteen years later, there is a war and he is drafted. The same mother, who was so scrupulously careful about her child’s safety, now waves goodbye to him with a tear but without protest. Mother’s own training in public school and throughout her life has made her believe that her son’s life is expendable whether or not the war in question is just. “Patriotism” is so deeply ingrained in her that she does not even imagine an alternative, even when her son’s life is at stake. It is of course also true that, biologically, parents are ready to let children go just as the state is ready to draft them. What a cunning synchronic-ity. In addition, old men who decide on war take advantage of the timing too. The warrior archetype is lively in eighteen-year-olds, who are willing to fight. Those in their mid-thirties, whose archetype is being a householder and making a mark in their chosen field, will not show an interest in battlefields of blood. The chiefs count on the fact that young braves will take the warrior myth literally rather than as a metaphor for interior battles. They will be willing to put their lives on the line to live out the collective myth of societies that have not found the path of nonviolence. Our collective nature thus seems geared to making war a workable enterprise. In some people, peacemaking is the archetype most in evidence. Nature seems to have made that population smaller, unfortunately. Our culture has trained us to endure and tolerate, not to protest and rebel. Every cell of our bodies learned that lesson. It may not be virtue; it may be fear. We may believe that showing anger is dangerous, because it opposes the authority we are obliged to appease and placate if we are to survive. This explains why we so admire someone who dares to say no and to stand up or even to die for what he believes. That person did not fall prey to the collective seduction. Watching Jeopardy on television, I notice that the audience applauds with special force when a contestant risks everything on a double-jeopardy question. The healthy part of us ardently admires daring. In our positive shadow, our admiration reflects our own disavowed or hidden potential. We, too, have it in us to dare. We can stand up for our truth, putting every comfort on the line, if only we can calm our long-scared ego and open to the part of us that wants to live free. Joseph Campbell says encouragingly, “The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Religion and Transference Transference is not simply horizontal, from person to person, but vertical from person to a higher power, usually personified as God. When
David Richo (When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships)
Sometimes taking the longer route may also find you pretty destinations along the way. Does it really matter, what path you take when everything is already predestined? Perhaps, it does simply because the path you take represents your soul, because somewhere it shows your growth and your journey as an individual, because it always makes way for a clear distinction of what your choices are paving way for you to understand how firm and how flexible you are as a person and how strong and how resilient you are as a soul. So set sail and walk along the way, in whichever path your heart opens up to you, for your heart always knows the way, even if the route is a little bit longer one, because sometimes taking the longer route may also find you pretty destinations along the way.
Debatrayee Banerjee
But unlike naïve Marxians, we do not believe that economic interests alone drive change. Change is often affected by the evolution of ideas, and particularly of overarching beliefs.54 Once the Enlightenment notion that “all men are created equal” was accepted (however that idea came to be accepted, whatever the drivers), it was no surprise that it evolved in directions that brought within its ambit women and slaves. Given these beliefs, it would be hard to preserve the slavery system, in spite of the economic interests in preserving slavery—and even though motivated interests may have played a role in the creation and spread of the racial “construct” in the first place.55 The uber-ideology of the Enlightenment—the questioning of authority and the belief in meritocracy, the notion that change is possible and desirable, the respect extended to science and technology—have created preconditions that are favorable to the creation of a learning society and to learning institutions (firms)
Joseph E. Stiglitz (Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth, Development, and Social Progress)
Why is it,” he asked instead, “that if I kept livestock in my home, people would say I was ignorant or daft, but if a pig wanders freely in the mansion of an earl, it’s called eccentric?” “There are three things that everyone expects of an aristocrat,” the valet replied, tugging firmly at the pig’s collar. “A country house, and a weak chin, and eccentricity.” He pushed and pulled at the pig with increasing determination, but the creature only sat more heavily. “I vow,” the valet wheezed, budging him only an inch at a time, “I’ll have you turned into sausage and collops by tomorrow’s breakfast!” Ignoring the determined valet, the pig stared up at Rhys with patient, hopeful eyes. “Quincy,” Rhys said, “look sharp.” He picked up a bread roll from his plate and tossed it casually in the air. The valet caught it deftly in a white-gloved hand. “Thank you, sir.” As he walked to the door with the bread in hand, the pig trotted after him. Rhys watched with a faint smile. “Desire,” he said, “is always better motivation than fear. Remember that, Quincy.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
The greatest enemy of enlightenment is “common sense”. In day-today life, common sense “works”, which is why ordinary people revere it. Most managers in the workplace are good at common sense i.e. knowing how to play the system, to obey the rules, to pander to higher managers, to avoid radical ideas, to highlight their modest successes and blame others for their failures, and to stick firmly within the domain of the conventional, acceptable and uncontroversial. Unfortunately, they’re hopeless at everything else. All geniuses, on the other hand, can “see” far beyond the realm of common sense. They use imagination, intuition and visionary ideas as their guides, not the trivialities of common sense. What would you rather be – a middle manager with a comfortable common sense life, or a genius who has unlocked the door to the mysteries of existence? Tragically for humanity, most people aspire to be middle managers. That’s the extent of their ambition, that’s as far as their horizons stretch. These are the sort of people that Nietzsche scornfully branded as “Last Men.
Adam Weishaupt (The Illuminati's Six Dimensional Universe)
Z[If any one says that the outward world is so constituted that one cannot resist it, let him study his own feelings and movements, and see whether there are not some plausible motives to account for his approval and assent, and the inclination of his reason to a particular object. To take an illustration, suppose a man to have made up his mind to exercise self-control and refrain from sexual intercourse, and then let a woman come upon the scene and solicit him to act contrary to his resolution; she is not cause sufficient to make him break his resolution. It is just because he likes the luxury and softness of the pleasure, and is unwilling to resist it, or stand firm in his determination, that he indulges in the licentious practice. On the contrary, the same thing may happen to a man of greater knowledge and better disciplined; he will not escape the sensations and incitements; but his reason, inasmuch as it is strengthened and nourished by exercise, and has firm convictions on the side of virtue, or is near to having them, stops the excitements short and gradually weakens the lust.
Origen (The Philocalia of Origen)
How could the crusaders be motivated by love and piety, considering all the brutal violence and bloodshed they committed? Not only is such a question anachronistic—violence was part and parcel of the medieval world—but centuries before Islam, Christian theologians had concluded that “the so called charity texts of the New Testament that preached passivism and forgiveness, not retaliation, were firmly defined as applying to the beliefs and behavior of the private person” and not the state, explains historian Christopher Tyerman. Christ himself distinguished between political and spiritual obligations (Matt. 22:21). He praised a Roman centurion without calling on him to “repent” by resigning from one of the most brutal militaries of history (Matt. 8: 5–13). When a group of soldiers asked John the Baptist how they should repent, he advised them always to be content with their army wages (Luke 3:14). Paul urged Christians to pray for “kings and all that are in authority” (1 Tim. 2:2). In short, “there was no intrinsic contradiction in a doctrine of personal, individual forgiveness condoning certain forms of necessary public violence to ensure the security in which, in St. Paul’s phrase, Christians ‘may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (1 Tim. 2:2).”27 Or as that chief articulator of “Just War” theory, Saint Augustine (d. 430), concluded, “It is the injustice of the opposing side, that lays on the wise man the duty to wage war.
Raymond Ibrahim (Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West)
Cohen continued to struggle with his own well-being. Even though he had achieved his life’s dream of running his own firm, he was still unhappy, and he had become dependent on a psychiatrist named Ari Kiev to help him manage his moods. In addition to treating depression, Kiev’s other area of expertise was success and how to achieve it. He had worked as a psychiatrist and coach with Olympic basketball players and rowers trying to improve their performance and overcome their fear of failure. His background building athletic champions appealed to Cohen’s unrelenting need to dominate in every transaction he entered into, and he started asking Kiev to spend entire days at SAC’s offices, tending to his staff. Kiev was tall, with a bushy mustache and a portly midsection, and he would often appear silently at a trader’s side and ask him how he was feeling. Sometimes the trader would be so startled to see Kiev there he’d practically jump out of his seat. Cohen asked Kiev to give motivational speeches to his employees, to help them get over their anxieties about losing money. Basically, Kiev was there to teach them to be ruthless. Once a week, after the market closed, Cohen’s traders would gather in a conference room and Kiev would lead them through group therapy sessions focused on how to make them more comfortable with risk. Kiev had them talk about their trades and try to understand why some had gone well and others hadn’t. “Are you really motivated to make as much money as you can? This guy’s going to help you become a real killer at it,” was how one skeptical staff member remembered Kiev being pitched to them. Kiev’s work with Olympians had led him to believe that the thing that blocked most people was fear. You might have two investors with the same amount of money: One was prepared to buy 250,000 shares of a stock they liked, while the other wasn’t. Why? Kiev believed that the reluctance was a form of anxiety—and that it could be overcome with proper treatment. Kiev would ask the traders to close their eyes and visualize themselves making trades and generating profits. “Surrendering to the moment” and “speaking the truth” were some of his favorite phrases. “Why weren’t you bigger in the trades that worked? What did you do right?” he’d ask. “Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning,” he would say. “Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.” Many of the traders hated the group therapy sessions. Some considered Kiev a fraud. “Ari was very aggressive,” said one. “He liked money.” Patricia, Cohen’s first wife, was suspicious of Kiev’s motives and believed that he was using his sessions with Cohen to find stock tips. From Kiev’s perspective, he found the perfect client in Cohen, a patient with unlimited resources who could pay enormous fees and whose reputation as one of the best traders on Wall Street could help Kiev realize his own goal of becoming a bestselling author. Being able to say that you were the
Sheelah Kolhatkar (Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street)
Staying at Home during this lockdown period is the right time to find your life purpose within Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. This is an opportunity to know yourself better and to understand what motivates and feeds your mind and your soul, and also to find out as to where you fit in the bigger Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. All members of each family/clan possess characteristics, abilities, and qualities specific to that family/clan. It is up to the family/clan to distinguish itself amongst other families/clans. Ba Ga Mohlala has become an institution to build cooperation in order to build and forge unity for social and economic benefits for Ba Ga Mohlala and Banareng in general. An institution is social structure in which people cooperate and which influences the behavior of people and the way they live. intelligence and assertiveness comes to us as our nature, it is in our blood (DNA) and all there is for us to do is to nature it and it will shine, otherwise it will gather dust and rust in us. The key of brotherhood and sisterhood is that brothers and sisters carry the same genetic code. Together, united, they carry the legacy of their forefathers. Our bond (through our shared blood/DNA) as Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan is our insurance for the future. As Ba Ga Mohlala we can have our own Law firms, Auditing Firms, Doctors's Medical Surgeries, Private School, Private Clinics or Private Hospital, farms and lot of small to medium manufacturing, service, retail and wholesale companies and become self relient. All it takes to achieve that is unity, willpower and commitment.
Pekwa Nicholas Mohlala
Creating “Correct” Children in the Classroom One of the most popular discipline programs in American schools is called Assertive Discipline. It teaches teachers to inflict the old “obey or suffer” method of control on students. Here you disguise the threat of punishment by calling it a choice the child is making. As in, “You have a choice, you can either finish your homework or miss the outing this weekend.” Then when the child chooses to try to protect his dignity against this form of terrorism, by refusing to do his homework, you tell him he has chosen his logical, natural consequence of being excluded from the outing. Putting it this way helps the parent or teacher mitigate against the bad feelings and guilt that would otherwise arise to tell the adult that they are operating outside the principles of compassionate relating. This insidious method is even worse than outand-out punishing, where you can at least rebel against your punisher. The use of this mind game teaches the child the false, crazy-making belief that they wanted something bad or painful to happen to them. These programs also have the stated intention of getting the child to be angry with himself for making a poor choice. In this smoke and mirrors game, the children are “causing” everything to happen and the teachers are the puppets of the children’s choices. The only ones who are not taking responsibility for their actions are the adults. Another popular coercive strategy is to use “peer pressure” to create compliance. For instance, a teacher tells her class that if anyone misbehaves then they all won’t get their pizza party. What a great way to turn children against each other. All this is done to help (translation: compel) children to behave themselves. But of course they are not behaving themselves: they are being “behaved” by the adults. Well-meaning teachers and parents try to teach children to be motivated (translation: do boring or aversive stuff without questioning why), responsible (translation: thoughtless conformity to the house rules) people. When surveys are conducted in which fourth-graders are asked what being good means, over 90% answer “being quiet.” And when teachers are asked what happens in a successful classroom, the answer is, “the teacher is able to keep the students on task” (translation: in line, doing what they are told). Consulting firms measuring teacher competence consider this a major criterion of teacher effectiveness. In other words if the students are quietly doing what they were told the teacher is evaluated as good. However my understanding of ‘real learning’ with twenty to forty children is that it is quite naturally a bit noisy and messy. Otherwise children are just playing a nice game of school, based on indoctrination and little integrated retained education. Both punishments and rewards foster a preoccupation with a narrow egocentric self-interest that undermines good values. All little Johnny is thinking about is “How much will you give me if I do X? How can I avoid getting punished if I do Y? What do they want me to do and what happens to me if I don’t do it?” Instead we could teach him to ask, “What kind of person do I want to be and what kind of community do I want to help make?” And Mom is thinking “You didn’t do what I wanted, so now I’m going to make something unpleasant happen to you, for your own good to help you fit into our (dominance/submission based) society.” This contributes to a culture of coercion and prevents a community of compassion. And as we are learning on the global level with our war on terrorism, as you use your energy and resources to punish people you run out of energy and resources to protect people. And even if children look well-behaved, they are not behaving themselves They are being behaved by controlling parents and teachers.
Kelly Bryson (Don't Be Nice, Be Real: Balancing Passion for Self with Compassion for Others)
Scrupling to do writings relative to keeping slaves has been a means of sundry small trials to me, in which I have so evidently felt my own will set aside that I think it good to mention a few of them. Tradesmen and retailers of goods, who depend on their business for a living, are naturally inclined to keep the good-will of their customers; nor is it a pleasant thing for young men to be under any necessity to question the judgment or honesty of elderly men, and more especially of such as have a fair reputation. Deep-rooted customs, though wrong, are not easily altered; but it is the duty of all to be firm in that which they certainly know is right for them. A charitable, benevolent man, well acquainted with a negro, may, I believe, under some circumstances, keep him in his family as a servant, on no other motives than the negro's good; but man, as man, knows not what shall be after him, nor hath he any assurance that his children will attain to that perfection in wisdom and goodness necessary rightly to exercise such power; hence it is clear to me, that I ought not to be the scribe where wills are drawn in which some children are made ales masters over others during life. About this time an ancient man of good esteem in the neighborhood came to my house to get his will written. He had young negroes, and I asked him privately how he purposed to dispose of them. He told me; I then said, "I cannot write thy will without breaking my own peace," and respectfully gave him my reasons for it. He signified that he had a choice that I should have written it, but as I could not, consistently with my conscience, he did not desire it, and so he got it written by some other person. A few years after, there being great alterations in his family, he came again to get me to write his will. His negroes were yet young, and his son, to whom he intended to give them, was, since he first spoke to me, from a libertine become a sober young man, and he supposed that I would have been free on that account to write it. We had much friendly talk on the subject, and then deferred it. A few days after he came again and directed their freedom, and I then wrote his will.
Benjamin Franklin (The Complete Harvard Classics - ALL 71 Volumes: The Five Foot Shelf & The Shelf of Fiction: The Famous Anthology of the Greatest Works of World Literature)
Charles Bean, the official historian of Australia’s part in World War I, was unusual in dealing closely with the deeds of the soldiers on the front line, and not just the plans and orders of their leaders. At the end of his account of the Gallipoli landing in the Official History, he asked what made the soldiers fight on. What motive sustained them? At the end of the second or third day of the Landing, when they had fought without sleep until the whole world seemed a dream, and they scarcely knew whether it was a world of reality or of delirium – and often, no doubt, it held something of both; when half of each battalion had been annihilated, and there seemed no prospect before any man except that of wounds or death in the most vile surroundings; when the dead lay three deep in the rifle-pits under the blue sky and the place was filled with stench and sickness, and reason had almost vanished – what was it then that carried each man on? It was not love of a fight. The Australian loved fighting better than most, but it is an occupation from which the glamour quickly wears. It was not hatred of the Turk. It is true that the men at this time hated their enemy for his supposed ill-treatment of the wounded – and the fact that, of the hundreds who lay out, only one wounded man survived in Turkish hands has justified their suspicions. But hatred was not the motive which inspired them. Nor was it purely patriotism, as it would have been had they fought on Australian soil. The love of country in Australians and New Zealanders was intense – how strong, they did not realise until they were far away from their home. Nor, in most cases was the motive their loyalty to the tie between Australia and Great Britain. Although, singly or combined, all these were powerful influences, they were not the chief. Nor was it the desire for fame that made them steer their course so straight in the hour of crucial trial. They knew too well the chance that their families, possibly even the men beside them, would never know how they died. Doubtless the weaker were swept on by the stronger. In every army which enters into battle there is a part which is dependent for its resolution upon the nearest strong man. If he endures, those around him will endure; if he turns, they turn; if he falls, they may become confused. But the Australian force contained more than its share of men who were masters of their own minds and decisions. What was the dominant motive that impelled them? It lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the sort of man who would give way when his mates were trusting to his firmness; to be the sort of man who would fail when the line, the whole force, and the allied cause required his endurance; to have made it necessary for another unit to do his own unit’s work; to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he had set his hand to a soldier’s task and had lacked the grit to carry it through – that was the prospect which these men could not face. Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood.
John Hirst (The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770)
gave up on the idea of creating “socialist men and women” who would work without monetary incentives. In a famous speech he criticized “equality mongering,” and thereafter not only did different jobs get paid different wages but also a bonus system was introduced. It is instructive to understand how this worked. Typically a firm under central planning had to meet an output target set under the plan, though such plans were often renegotiated and changed. From the 1930s, workers were paid bonuses if the output levels were attained. These could be quite high—for instance, as much as 37 percent of the wage for management or senior engineers. But paying such bonuses created all sorts of disincentives to technological change. For one thing, innovation, which took resources away from current production, risked the output targets not being met and the bonuses not being paid. For another, output targets were usually based on previous production levels. This created a huge incentive never to expand output, since this only meant having to produce more in the future, since future targets would be “ratcheted up.” Underachievement was always the best way to meet targets and get the bonus. The fact that bonuses were paid monthly also kept everyone focused on the present, while innovation is about making sacrifices today in order to have more tomorrow. Even when bonuses and incentives were effective in changing behavior, they often created other problems. Central planning was just not good at replacing what the great eighteenth-century economist Adam Smith called the “invisible hand” of the market. When the plan was formulated in tons of steel sheet, the sheet was made too heavy. When it was formulated in terms of area of steel sheet, the sheet was made too thin. When the plan for chandeliers was made in tons, they were so heavy, they could hardly hang from ceilings. By the 1940s, the leaders of the Soviet Union, even if not their admirers in the West, were well aware of these perverse incentives. The Soviet leaders acted as if they were due to technical problems, which could be fixed. For example, they moved away from paying bonuses based on output targets to allowing firms to set aside portions of profits to pay bonuses. But a “profit motive” was no more encouraging to innovation than one based on output targets. The system of prices used to calculate profits was almost completely unconnected to the value of new innovations or technology. Unlike in a market economy, prices in the Soviet Union were set by the government, and thus bore little relation to value. To more specifically create incentives for innovation, the Soviet Union introduced explicit innovation bonuses in 1946. As early as 1918, the principle had been recognized that an innovator should receive monetary rewards for his innovation, but the rewards set were small and unrelated to the value of the new technology. This changed only in 1956, when it was stipulated that the bonus should be proportional to the productivity of the innovation. However, since productivity was calculated in terms of economic benefits measured using the existing system of prices, this was again not much of an incentive to innovate. One could fill many pages with examples of the perverse incentives these schemes generated. For example, because the size of the innovation bonus fund was limited by the wage bill of a firm, this immediately reduced the incentive to produce or adopt any innovation that might have economized on labor.
Daron Acemoğlu (Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty)
Make sure when you reach for the stars, you keep both feet firmly planted on the ground.
Charles F. Glassman (Brain Drain - The Breakthrough That Will Change Your Life)
We don't say cannot here at Shadowfell,' Tali put in firmly, silencing him. 'And we don't say impossible.
Juliet Marillier (The Caller (Shadowfell, #3))
To maximize return on investment is an inadequate statement of purpose. It fails to accomplish the paramount responsibility of leadership—to provide meaning and inspiration to those who are expected to follow. The mass of people within our corporations are not primarily motivated by maximizing private gain. Many firms are structured as if they were….
H. Thomas Johnson (Relevance Regained)
Capitalism is not the mere existence of persons or firms producing for sale on the market with the intention of obtaining a profit. Such persons or firms have existed for thousands of years all across the world. Nor is the existence of persons working for wages sufficient as a definition. Wage-labor has also been known for thousands of years. We are in a capitalist system only when the system gives priority to the endless accumulation of capital. Using such a definition, only the modern world-system has been a capitalist system. Endless accumulation is a quite simple concept: it means that people and firms are accumulating capital in order to accumulate still more capital, a process that is continual and endless. If we say that a system “gives priority” to such endless accumulation, it means that there exist structural mechanisms by which those who act with other motivations are penalized in some way, and are eventually eliminated from the social scene, whereas those who act with the appropriate motivations are rewarded and, if successful, enriched.
Anonymous
is driven more by fear of not being a success than by a concrete desire to do anything in particular.” The postcollege choices of Ivy League students, he explained, “are motivated by two main decision rules: (1) close down as few options as possible; and (2) only do things that increase the possibility of future overachievement.” Recruiters for investment banks and consulting firms understand this psychology, and they exploit it perfectly: the jobs are competitive and high status, but the process of applying and being accepted is regimented and predictable. The recruiters also make the argument to college seniors that if they join Goldman Sachs or McKinsey and Company or any similar firm, they’re not really choosing anything—they’re just going to spend a couple of years making money and, perhaps, recruiters suggest, doing some good in the world, and then at some point in the future they’ll make the real decision about what they want to do and who they want to be. “For people who don’t know how to get a job in the open economy,” Kwak wrote, “and who have ended each phase of their lives by taking the test to do the most prestigious thing possible in the next phase, all of this comes naturally.
Paul Tough (How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character)
If you would like to be respected tried hard to be good to others without gaining benefits If you would like to fly above the ground prepared yourself in danger otherwise keep your foot firm in the ground and you will never witness any change in your life. The circle of life is unstoppable but you can stop not to ride the wrong side. Time has a valuable benefit on us but less we benefit from it How hard you try to achieve a goal dependent on how you far away from what you think were important for you before. Look forward before you look back ward but always look backward to realise the important of the past mistake in your life I never assume politics is easier then lead rough gangs into the battle field until you confront the motives of inner group. The more you tried to persuade the fool the more he exposes your weakness, Every man has time to live but brave guys have no time to live themselves The lack of leaders is a lack of light in the middle of a dark forest The student will not realise his potential unless his time in the class
Daud Gilingil
but you need to have a strong, unshakeable sense of why you made the choice to enter Biglaw and what you hope to get out of it. If you do not have this focus to motivate you, drive you on through rough times, give you solid, achievable goals or at least a purpose, Biglaw is perfectly capable of crushing the soul out of you and leaving you broken and bitter by the side of the road.
Sarah Powell (Biglaw: How to Survive the First Two Years of Practice in a Mega-Firm, or, The Art of Doc Review)
Be firm with your decisions.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
An unbridled pursuit of justice will never stand on moral pillars but will eventually sink to the same morally-bankrupted motive which caused the need for justice in the first place. At that point, the pursuit becomes nothing but a personal quest to justify one’s own anger and refusal to live life once again. This became the reality of the shell of a man known as Thuy’s father. Thang stood firmly on a collision course with death. Nothing else could satisfy the bitterness. Neighbors, once sympathetic, backed away, frightened that his angst might engulf and destroy
Mark W. Sasse (The Reach of the Banyan Tree)
I am not a believer of the law of attraction (though I do not deny the possibilities of it to be true), but I firmly believe in the ability of making choices, the ability to take conscious decisions.
Namrata Kumari (Change Your Beliefs To Change Your Reality)
Through a diversity of Bible-based beliefs, Colonial America firmly founded its culture, laws, and government on the Judeo-Christian worldview. That common faith was clearly expressed in the founding documents of all thirteen American colonies: The Massachusetts Bay Colony’s charter recorded an intent to spread the “knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith,” much as the Mayflower Compact cited a commitment to “the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian faith.” Connecticut’s Fundamental Orders officially called for “an orderly and decent Government established according to God” that would “maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” In New Hampshire, the Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter vowed to establish a government “in the name of Christ” that “shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God.” Rhode Island’s colonial charter invoked the “blessing of God” for “a sure foundation of happiness to all America.” The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England stated, “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel …” New York’s Duke’s Laws prohibited denial of “the true God and his Attributes.” New Jersey’s founding charter vowed, “Forasmuch as it has pleased God, to bring us into this Province…we may be a people to the praise and honor of his name.” Delaware’s original charter officially acknowledged “One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World.” Pennsylvania’s charter officially cited a “Love of Civil Society and Christian Religion” as motivation for the colony’s founding. Maryland’s charter declared an official goal of “extending the Christian Religion.” Virginia’s first charter commissioned colonization as “so noble a work, which may, by the Providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the…propagating of Christian Religion.” The charter for the Colony of Carolina proclaimed “a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith.” Georgia’s charter officially cited a commitment to the “propagating of Christian religion.”27
Rod Gragg (Forged in Faith: How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation, 1607–1776)
Stand strong. Stand firm. Stand tall like tower.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Make sure you stand firm on the solid rock.
Lailah Gifty Akita
When he entered the anteroom, two women looked up at him. One was Miss Robertson, the governor's secretary; the other he did not recognize till she smiled and said his name in a gentle voice. She was Mrs. Freeman, the wife of the bishop; he saluted her and went to Miss Robertson. 'Will you tell them I'm here?' he said. 'I'm sorry, Mr. Haffner, they don't even want me to take minutes right now.' 'Well, just go tell them I'm out of the running.' There was not so much as a flicker in her eyes. 'They locked the door,' she said, 'and besides, I don't think they'll accept your withdrawal.' 'Won't they though. Just give them my message, Miss Robertson. I'm leaving.' 'Oh, Mr. Haffner, I know they'll want to see you. It's very important.' 'They will, huh. I'll give them half an hour.' He sat down beside her to talk. It was not that he liked Miss Robertson particularly. Her soul had been for a long time smoothed out and hobbled by girdles and high heels as her body; her personality was as blank and brown as her gabardine suit; her mind was exactly good enough to take down 140 any sort of words a minute without error, without boredom, without wincing. But she could talk idly in a bare room like this well enough; he remembered that she liked science-fiction; he drew her out. Besides, she was not Mrs. Freeman. Mrs. Freeman was a good woman; that is, she did good, and did not resent those who did bad but pitied them. For example, now: she was knitting alone while the other two talked, neither trying to join them nor, as John actively knew, making them uncomfortable for not having included her; and she was waiting for the bishop, who for reasons no one understood, hated to drive at night without her. John liked good people—no, he respected them above everyone else, above the powerful or beautiful or rich, whom he knew well, the gifted or learned or even the wise; indeed, he was rather in awe of the good, but their actual sweet presence made him uncomfortable. Mrs. Freeman there: with her hair drawn back straight to a bun, she sat in a steel-tube, leatherette chair, against a beige, fire-resistant, sound-absorbent wall, knitting in that ambient, indirect light socks for the mad; he knew quite well that if he should go over beside her she would talk with him in her gentle voice about whatever he wished to talk about, that she would have firm views which, however, she would never declare harshly against his should they differ, that she would tell him, if he asked about her work with the insane, what she had accomplished and what failed to accomplish, that she would make him acutely uncomfortable. He felt himself deficient not to be living, as people like Mrs. Freeman seemed to live, in an altogether moral world, but more especially he was reluctant to come near such people because he did not want to know more than he could help knowing of their motives; he did not trust motives; he was a lawyer. Therefore, though it was all but rude of him, he sat with Miss Robertson till the door opened.
George P. Elliott (Hour of Last Things)
beaten and humiliated and experience indescribable suffering and anguish. Will become sin offering and die on job. To qualify: Must be male, minimum age 30. Father must be God, mother must be of house and lineage of David, must have been virgin when he was born. Adopted father must also be of house of David. Must have sinless blood and spotless record. Must have been born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth. Must be self-motivated, with aggressive personality and burning desire to help people. Must have tremendous knowledge of Old Testament and firm reliance on biblical principles. Must incorporate the foresight of Noah, the faith of Abraham, the patience of Job, the faithfulness of Joseph, the meekness of Moses, the courage of Joshua, the heart of David, the wisdom of Solomon, the boldness of Elijah, the power of Elisha, the eloquence of Isaiah, the commitment of Jeremiah, the vision of Ezekiel and the love of God. Wages: Holy spirit (without measure) to start. Additional payoff in intimacy with God and receiving revelation as necessary to complete job. Constant on-job training, supervision and guidance by top-level management. Benefits: Position will lead to highly exalted position in future if job carried out successfully. Workman’s compensation: Injuries sustained on job, including death, well compensated by promotion including new body. Management will highly promote name upon successful completion of job, and entire publicity department will be devoted to getting name before multitudes. Will assume presidency of expanding international venture (The Ministry of Reconciliation), as Head of Body of well-equipped members ready to move dynamic new product on world market. All in all, tremendous eternal potential for growth and rewards in return on initial investment of giving life. If qualified, management will contact you. No need to apply.
John A. Lynn (One God & One Lord: Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the Christian Faith)
Knowing how to manage requires one to know how to start a movement rather than just to follow it. And one must take a firm position when necessary.
Mitta Xinindlu
Hold fast to firm faith.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Stand firm in the storm.
Lailah Gifty Akita
The putrid smell of decomposing flesh filled her nostrils, and she struggled to keep calm. She'd seen enough; she didn't want to look at the woman's face, but Ben gently pushed her into the room and she had no choice but to enter. A firm voice inside her head told her to pull herself together; she needed to see this woman. She owed it to her to look at her, study the horrible way she'd died and etch her face into her mind so she could recall her whenever she needed a reminder of why she was doing this job. When she was exhausted and working late into the night, she wanted to be able to see the image in front of her in full technicolour to keep her motivated
Helen Phifer (The Killer's Girl (Detective Morgan Brookes, #2))
Faith is a firm fact.
Lailah Gifty Akita
but I did hear some things about his speech that I think bear repeating: 1. He is a strong believer that people who talk too much seem to have bad luck. 2. People who do not return phone calls promptly do not seem to make the grade at a highly profitable firm. 3. People who object to end runs will never make it in football, or with successful investment banking firms. Certain groups do need to observe a “chain of command” atmosphere, but highly motivated, intelligent people do not need this handcuff. 4. A firm that has enthusiastic receptionists and telephone operators starts off with a tremendous advantage over the dummies of the world. Keep in mind that the first impression people receive from Bear Stearns is with those associates. 5. If a business person has to ask his accounting department if he is making a profit, he will not be in business very long.
Alan C. Greenberg (Memos from the Chairman)
Stand firm in your faith.
Lailah Gifty Akita
The success of any endeavour is related to the depth of the emotional and intellectual connection you have with it. Very often, writers select topics to write about that diverge from what interests them. Or to talk about subjects of which they’re not firmly grounded – probably driven by some egoistic motives. What ends up happening to them is that they do not create decent work.
David Jeremiah (Unpublished: Top 18 Tips to Take You from An Idea to Becoming A Self-Published Author)
Our motivation to stand firm in faith, even when we are going through things that we don’t understand, is found in one thing: God’s declaration of his intention toward us.
Paul David Tripp (Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn't Make Sense)
Faith is the only thing that can keep you firm at all times.
Lailah Gifty Akita
About book marketing ideas, things change rapidly. A great deal of it is because there are such a significant number of books being distributed every day — 4500 to be accurate. In this way, approaches to advance your book move and change. We, as book publishing firm realize which are the best book advertising procedures to offer more books and all need to be working more intelligent, and not harder. So, in addition to the fact that I want to share some understanding of advertising in the New Year, yet I likewise need to give you tips for long-distance achievement. What's more, in case you're extremely genuine about taking things up a level, recognizing what to do as well as how to do it, I'd love to visit about a coordinated effort. Get in touch with me, and we should be sure you comprehend the best methodology for your particular creator brand. As a matter of first importance, it's significant that whatever you do, you do reliably. So regularly outside the box, writers attempt to accomplish more book advertising than their time and transmission capacity permit. There are heaps of reasons books may not sell; however, perhaps the most compelling motivation a book isn't selling is how it's evaluated.
SmithPublicity
but there was one thing not generally appreciated about the paranoid state. It was incredibly labour-intensive. There were simply not enough people to monitor all the cameras. Every shop had one, every bus and train and theatre and public convenience, every street and road and alleyway. Computers with facial recognition and gait recognition and body language recognition could do some of the job, but they were relatively simple to fool, expensive, and times had been hard for decades. It was cheaper to get people to watch the screens. But no nation on Earth had a security service large enough, a police force big enough, to keep an eye on all those live feeds. So it was contracted out. To private security firms all trying to undercut each other. The big stores had their own security men, but they were only interested in people going in and out of the store, not someone just passing by. So instead of a single all-seeing eye London’s seemingly-impregnable surveillance map was actually a patchwork of little territories and jurisdictions, and while they all had, by law, to make their footage available to the forces of law and order, many of the control rooms were actually manned by bored, underpaid, undertrained and badly-motivated immigrants.
Dave Hutchinson (Europe In Autumn (Fractured Europe Sequence, #1))
Repentance is a firm resolution to act responsibly right.
Lailah Gifty Akita
Stand firm in faith
Lailah Gifty Akita
Finally, as I’ve emphasized, there is the level of conscious public policy. A Soviet official issuing a planning document, or an American politician calling for job creation, might not be entirely aware of the likely effects of their action. Still, once a situation is created, even as an unintended side effect, politicians can be expected to size up the larger political implications of that situation when they make up their minds what—if anything—to do about it. Does this mean that members of the political class might actually collude in the maintenance of useless employment? If that seems a daring claim, even conspiracy talk, consider the following quote, from an interview with then US president Barack Obama about some of the reasons why he bucked the preferences of the electorate and insisted on maintaining a private, for-profit health insurance system in America: “I don’t think in ideological terms. I never have,” Obama said, continuing on the health care theme. “Everybody who supports single-payer health care says, ‘Look at all this money we would be saving from insurance and paperwork.’ That represents one million, two million, three million jobs [filled by] people who are working at Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser or other places. What are we doing with them? Where are we employing them?”9 I would encourage the reader to reflect on this passage because it might be considered a smoking gun. What is the president saying here? He acknowledges that millions of jobs in medical insurance companies like Kaiser or Blue Cross are unnecessary. He even acknowledges that a socialized health system would be more efficient than the current market-based system, since it would reduce unnecessary paperwork and reduplication of effort by dozens of competing private firms. But he’s also saying it would be undesirable for that very reason. One motive, he insists, for maintaining the existing market-based system is precisely its inefficiency, since it is better to maintain those millions of basically useless office jobs than to cast about trying to find something else for the paper pushers to do.10 So here is the most powerful man in the world at the time publicly reflecting on his signature legislative achievement—and he is insisting that a major factor in the form that legislature took is the preservation of bullshit jobs.
David Graeber (Bullshit Jobs: A Theory)