Quality Statements Quotes

Isn't love the emanation of desire or just a statement of emptiness in expectation? As we long for what is missing and finally hold it, could it be that we may not crave it anymore in the end? Still, if we learn to "enjoy" the precious moments of its presence, it can remain a captivating experience and a mesmerizing adventure. If it keeps on overwhelming us with "joy," love can turn into a magic prism and make it possible to discover a rainbow of twinkles and enchanting sceneries. As our imagination constantly discerns new qualities, the sparkle of love does not expire in the boredom of forgetfulness. (“Twilight of desire“)

We talk about freedom the same way we talk about art,” she said, to whoever was listening. “Like it is a statement of quality rather than a description. Art doesn’t mean good or bad. Art only means art. It can be terrible and still be art. Freedom can be good or bad too. There can be terrible freedom.

we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

To pronounce something clever and honest is not such a big deal, lots of them have been said and written. For a statement of truth to be effective and for it to make people wiser, it has to be filtered through the soul of a highest quality, the soul of an artist.

If you would just listen to me . . . if you would just look at the pictures I took—” “We’ve seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you’ve said tonight checks out—not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone.” “I’m sorry if the quality is lacking,” Gabrielle replied, acidly. “The next time I’m witnessing a blood slaughter by a gang of psychos, I’ll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses.

Call themselves?" asked Yama. "You are wrong, Sam, Godhood is more than a name. It is a condition of being. One does not achieve it merely by being immortal, for even the lowliest laborer in the fields may achieve continuity of existence. Is it then the conditioning of an Aspect? No. Any competent hypnotist can play games with the self-image. Is it the raising up of an Attribute? Of course not. I can design machines more powerful and more accurate than any faculty a man may cultivate. Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. Some ancient poet said that the world is full of echoes and correspondences. Another wrote a long poem of an inferno, wherein each man suffered a torture which coincided in nature with those forces which had ruled his life. Being a god is being able to recognize within one's self these things that are important, and then to strike the single note that brings them into alignment with everything else that exists. Then, beyond morals or logic or esthetics, one is wind or fire, the sea, the mountains, rain, the sun or the stars, the flight of an arrow, the end of a day, the clasp of love. One rules through one's ruling passions. Those who look upon gods then say, without even knowing their names, 'He is Fire. She is Dance. He is Destruction. She is Love.' So, to reply to your statement, they do not call themselves gods. Everyone else does, though, everyone who beholds them." "So they play that on their fascist banjos, eh?" "You choose the wrong adjective." "You've already used up all the others.

Programmers working with high-level languages achieve better productivity and quality than those working with lower-level languages. Languages such as C++, Java, Smalltalk, and Visual Basic have been credited with improving productivity, reliability, simplicity, and comprehensibility by factors of 5 to 15 over low-level languages such as assembly and C (Brooks 1987, Jones 1998, Boehm 2000). You save time when you don't need to have an awards ceremony every time a C statement does what it's supposed to.

You are not your thoughts!! This simple yet powerful statement can greatly change the quality of your life.

Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.

Black females, for the most part, know by the time they are ten years old that the world is not much concerned with the quality of their lives or even their lives at all. When politicians and salespeople start being kind to black women, seeking them out, offering them largesse, the women accept the soft voices, the simpering statements, the often idle promises, because those are likely to be the only flattering behavior directed to them that day. Behind the women's eyes, however, there is a wisdom that does not pretend to be unaware; nor does it permit gullibility.

Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions 1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense.

If emotion and fatigue lowered the potency of thought, what raised it? I began to reconsider my moments of delight in terms of this statement of the problem, moments whose essential quality had been a fusing of experience, a flash of significance uniting the meaningless and separate. If one assumed that thinking was a process involving some form of energy, it seemed quite appropriate to imagine my gesture of holding back from mental action as causing an accumulation of energy which automatically raised the potency. By preventing energy from continually flowing away in a noisy stream of efforts and purposes I could make it fill up into a silent pool of clearness.

We Americans often say that marriage is hard work. I'm not sure that the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work -- I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements - but how does marriage become hard work? Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband - more than anything else - is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency" or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be INSPIRED by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey!

Owing to the shape of a bell curve, the education system is geared to the mean. Unfortunately, that kind of education is virtually calculated to bore and alienate gifted minds. But instead of making exceptions where it would do the most good, the educational bureaucracy often prefers not to be bothered. In my case, for example, much of the schooling to which I was subjected was probably worse than nothing. It consisted not of real education, but of repetition and oppressive socialization (entirely superfluous given the dose of oppression I was getting away from school). Had I been left alone, preferably with access to a good library and a minimal amount of high-quality instruction, I would at least have been free to learn without useless distractions and gratuitous indoctrination. But alas, no such luck. Let’s try to break the problem down a bit. The education system […] is committed to a warm and fuzzy but scientifically counterfactual form of egalitarianism which attributes all intellectual differences to environmental factors rather than biology, implying that the so-called 'gifted' are just pampered brats who, unless their parents can afford private schooling, should atone for their undeserved good fortune by staying behind and enriching the classroom environments of less privileged students. This approach may appear admirable, but its effects on our educational and intellectual standards, and all that depends on them, have already proven to be overwhelmingly negative. This clearly betrays an ulterior motive, suggesting that it has more to do with social engineering than education. There is an obvious difference between saying that poor students have all of the human dignity and basic rights of better students, and saying that there are no inherent educationally and socially relevant differences among students. The first statement makes sense, while the second does not. The gifted population accounts for a very large part of the world’s intellectual resources. As such, they can obviously be put to better use than smoothing the ruffled feathers of average or below-average students and their parents by decorating classroom environments which prevent the gifted from learning at their natural pace. The higher we go on the scale of intellectual brilliance – and we’re not necessarily talking just about IQ – the less support is offered by the education system, yet the more likely are conceptual syntheses and grand intellectual achievements of the kind seldom produced by any group of markedly less intelligent people. In some cases, the education system is discouraging or blocking such achievements, and thus cheating humanity of their benefits.

THE BOOK: A SPIRITUAL INSTRUMENT I am the author of a statement to which there have been varying reactions, including praise and blame, and which I shall make again in the present article. Briefly, it is this: all earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book. It terrifies me to think of the qualities (among them genius, certainly) which the author of such a work will have to possess. I am one of the unpossessed. We will let that pass and imagine that it bears no author’s name. What, then, will the work itself be? I answer: a hymn, all harmony and joy; an immaculate grouping of universal relationships come together for some miraculous and glittering occasion. Man’s duty is to observe with the eyes of the divinity; for if his connection with that divinity is to be made clear, it can be expressed only by the pages of the open book in front of him.

Mister Trod?" said Bod. "Tell me about revenge." "Dish best served cold," said Nehemiah Trot. "Do not take revenge in the heat of the moment. Instead, wait until the hour is propitious. There was a Grub Street hack named O'Leary--an Irishman, I should add--who had the nerve, the confounded cheek to write of my first slim volume of poems, A Nosegay of Beauty Assembled for Gentleman of Quality, that it was inferior doggerel of no worth whatsoever, and that the paper it was written on would have been better used as--no, I cannot say. Let us simply agree that it was a most vulgar statement.

If we describe someone we dislike intensely, a single state-ment usually does it. But if, instead, we are forced to describe the person in great detail, eventually there will be some quality we appreciate.

How we allow ourselves to be fed is a metaphor—if ever there was one—for the vibrational quality of what we're willing to 'take in' that goes well beyond the act of filling our bellies. It's an energetic statement of intent.

Let us take a limited example and compare the war machine and the state apparatus in the context of the theory of games. Let us take chess and Go, from the standpoint of game pieces, the relations between the pieces and the space involved. Chess is a game of the State, or of the court: the emperor of China played it. Chess pieces are coded; they have an internal nature and intrinsic properties from which their movements, situations, and confrontations derive. They have qualities; a knight remains a knight, a pawn a pawn, a bishop a bishop. Each is like a subject of the statement endowed with relative power, and these relative powers combine in a subject of enunciation, that is, the chess player or the game’s form of interiority. Go pieces, I contrast, are pellets, disks, simple arithmetic units, and have only an anonymous, collective, or third-person function: “It” makes a move. “It” could be a man, a woman, a louse, an elephant. Go pieces are elements of a nonsubjectified machine assemblage with no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. Thus the relations are very different in the two cases. Within their milieu of interiority, chess pieces entertain biunivocal relations with one another, and with the adversary’s pieces: their functioning is structural. One the other hand, a Go piece has only a milieu of exteriority, or extrinsic relations with nebulas or constellations, according to which it fulfills functions of insertion or situation, such as bordering, encircling, shattering. All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot (or can do so diachronically only). Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war with a front, a rear, battles. But what is proper to Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas chess is a semiology. Finally, the space is not at all the same: in chess, it is a question of arranging a closed space for oneself, thus going from one point to another, of occupying the maximum number of squares with the minimum number of pieces. In Go, it is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point: the movement is not from one point to another, but becomes perpetual, without aim or destination, without departure or arrival. The “smooth” space of Go, as against the “striated” space of chess. The nomos of Go against the State of chess, nomos against polis. The difference is that chess codes and decodes space, whereas Go proceeds altogether differently, territorializing and deterritorializing it (make the outside a territory in space; consolidate that territory by the construction of a second, adjacent territory; deterritorialize the enemy by shattering his territory from within; deterritorialize oneself by renouncing, by going elsewhere…) Another justice, another movement, another space-time.

If you could design a new structure for Camp Half-Blood what would it be? Annabeth: I’m glad you asked. We seriously need a temple. Here we are, children of the Greek gods, and we don’t even have a monument to our parents. I’d put it on the hill just south of Half-Blood Hill, and I’d design it so that every morning the rising sun would shine through its windows and make a different god’s emblem on the floor: like one day an eagle, the next an owl. It would have statues for all the gods, of course, and golden braziers for burnt offerings. I’d design it with perfect acoustics, like Carnegie Hall, so we could have lyre and reed pipe concerts there. I could go on and on, but you probably get the idea. Chiron says we’d have to sell four million truckloads of strawberries to pay for a project like that, but I think it would be worth it. Aside from your mom, who do you think is the wisest god or goddess on the Olympian Council? Annabeth: Wow, let me think . . . um. The thing is, the Olympians aren’t exactly known for wisdom, and I mean that with the greatest possible respect. Zeus is wise in his own way. I mean he’s kept the family together for four thousand years, and that’s not easy. Hermes is clever. He even fooled Apollo once by stealing his cattle, and Apollo is no slouch. I’ve always admired Artemis, too. She doesn’t compromise her beliefs. She just does her own thing and doesn’t spend a lot of time arguing with the other gods on the council. She spends more time in the mortal world than most gods, too, so she understands what’s going on. She doesn’t understand guys, though. I guess nobody’s perfect. Of all your Camp Half-Blood friends, who would you most like to have with you in battle? Annabeth: Oh, Percy. No contest. I mean, sure he can be annoying, but he’s dependable. He’s brave and he’s a good fighter. Normally, as long as I’m telling him what to do, he wins in a fight. You’ve been known to call Percy “Seaweed Brain” from time to time. What’s his most annoying quality? Annabeth: Well, I don’t call him that because he’s so bright, do I? I mean he’s not dumb. He’s actually pretty intelligent, but he acts so dumb sometimes. I wonder if he does it just to annoy me. The guy has a lot going for him. He’s courageous. He’s got a sense of humor. He’s good-looking, but don’t you dare tell him I said that. Where was I? Oh yeah, so he’s got a lot going for him, but he’s so . . . obtuse. That’s the word. I mean he doesn’t see really obvious stuff, like the way people feel, even when you’re giving him hints, and being totally blatant. What? No, I’m not talking about anyone or anything in particular! I’m just making a general statement. Why does everyone always think . . . agh! Forget it. Interview with GROVER UNDERWOOD, Satyr What’s your favorite song to play on the reed pipes?

such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. you can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.

Since Rousseau and Kant, there have been two schools of liberalism, which may be distinguished as the hard-headed and the soft-hearted. The hard-headed developed, through Bentham, Ricardo, and Marx, by logical stages into Stalin; the soft-hearted, by other logical stages, through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, into Hitler. This statement, of course, is too schematic to be quite true, but it may serve as a map and a mnemonic. The stages in the evolution of ideas have had almost the quality of the Hegelian dialectic: doctrines have developed, by steps that each seem natural, into their opposites. But the developments have not been due solely to the inherent movement of ideas; they have been governed, throughout, by external circumstances and the reflection of these circumstances in human emotions. That this is the case may be made evident by one outstanding fact: that the ideas of liberalism have undergone no part of this development in America, where they remain to this day as in Locke.

Gender is not wild, it’s prescribed. When we say, “Girls are nurturing and boys are ambitious. Girls are soft and boys are tough. Girls are emotional and boys are stoic,” we are not telling truths, we are sharing beliefs—beliefs that have become mandates. If these statements seem true, it’s because everyone has been so well programmed. Human qualities are not gendered.

Hence we may, with proper precautions, regard a certain humility as the overall characteristic of medieval art. Of the art; not always of the artists. Self-esteem may arise within any occupation at any period. A chef, a surgeon, or a scholar, may be proud, even to arrogance, of his skill; but his skill is confessedly the means to an end beyond itself, and the status of the skill depends wholly on the dignity or necessity of that end. I think it was then like that with all the arts. Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honourable, and delightful things are superior to it: it exists for their sake; its own use, honour, or delightfulness is derivative from theirs. In that sense the art is humble even when the artists are proud; proud of their proficiency in the art, but not making for the art itself the high Renaissance or Romantic claims. Perhaps they might not all have fully agreed with the statement that poetry is infima inter omnes doctrinas.17 But it awoke no such hurricane of protest as it would awake today. In this great change something has been won and something lost. I take it to be part and parcel of the same great process of Internalisation18 which has turned genius from an attendant daemon into a quality of the mind. Always, century by century, item after item is transferred from the object’s side of the account to the subject’s. And now, in some extreme forms of Behaviourism, the subject himself is discounted as merely subjective; we only think that we think. Having eaten up everything else, he eats himself up too. And where we ‘go from that’ is a dark question.

Human minds are not designed to accept negative statements like ‘don’t do this’ or ‘I can’t do that’, ‘we can’t make any mistakes’, ‘failure is not accepted’. These kinds of thoughts only serve to counter productively stress the body and lead to further mistakes. And if just one mistake is made, it turns into a vicious cycle. The more they think about it, the more mistakes will be made, and the more the quality of their plays will drop.

When any problem occurs, you have two choices: you can get upset about it, or you can simply figure out what needs to be done. Getting upset has a seductive quality to it; there is rich drama to be had there. The cost is that there is no happiness to be had. Happiness opens up when you drop the drama and start looking for what needs to be done. Any relationship improves when both people shift from complaints to statements of what they want.

Survival of the fittest" in the commonly used animal sense is not a theory or principle for a "time-binding" being. This theory is only for the physical bodies of animals; its effect upon humanity is sinister and degrading. We see the principle at work all about us in criminal exploitation and profiteering. As a matter of fact, the ages-long application of this animal principle to human affairs has degraded the whole human morale in an inconceivably far-reaching way. Personal greed and selfishness are brazenly owned as principles of conduct. We shrug our shoulders in acquiescence and proclaim greed and selfishness to be the very core of human nature, take it all for granted, and let it pass at that. We have gone so far in our degradation that the prophet of capitalistic principles, Adam Smith, in his famous Wealth of Nations, arrives at the laws of wealth, not from the phenomena of wealth nor from statistical statements, but from the phenomena of selfishness-a fact which shows how far-reaching in its dire influence upon all humanity is the theory that human beings are "animals." Of course the effect is very disastrous. The preceding chapters have shown that the theory is false; it is false, not only because of its unhappy effects, but it belies the characteristic nature of man. Human nature, this time-binding power, not only has the peculiar capacity for perpetual progress, but it has, over and above all animal propensities, certain qualities constituting it a distinctive dimension or type of life. Not only our whole collective life proves a love for higher ideals, but even our dead give us the rich heritage, material and spiritual, of all their toils. There is nothing mystical about it; to call SUCH a class a naturally selfish class is not only nonsensical but monstrous.

A more appropriate statement would be that, if you store more calories than you expend you'll gain weight. Store being the operative word there and a rather obvious observation to make about someone that is getting heavier. This more appropriate statement allows us to ask the question, why are you storing more body fat than you're losing? Is it because of the total calories you consumed, or is it because of a biochemical stimulus that makes your fat tissue grow created from the quality and quantity of foods and drinks that you consume.

Because it’s hard for people to gauge quality by flavor, they tend to gauge it by price. That’s a mistake. Langstaff has evaluated wine professionally for twenty years. In her opinion, the difference between a $500 bottle of wine and one that costs $30 is largely hype. “Wineries that sell their wines for $500 a bottle have the same problems as wineries that sell their wine for $10 a bottle. You can’t make the statement that if it’s low-cost it’s not well made.” Most of the time, people don’t even prefer the expensive bottle—provided they can’t see the label.

Likewise, we “trusted the process,” but the process didn’t save Toy Story 2 either. “Trust the Process” had morphed into “Assume that the Process Will Fix Things for Us.” It gave us solace, which we felt we needed. But it also coaxed us into letting down our guard and, in the end, made us passive. Even worse, it made us sloppy. Once this became clear to me, I began telling people that the phrase was meaningless. I told our staff that it had become a crutch that was distracting us from engaging, in a meaningful way, with our problems. We should trust in people, I told them, not processes. The error we’d made was forgetting that “the process” has no agenda and doesn’t have taste. It is just a tool—a framework. We needed to take more responsibility and ownership of our own work, our need for self-discipline, and our goals. Imagine an old, heavy suitcase whose well-worn handles are hanging by a few threads. The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase. Once you’re aware of the suitcase/handle problem, you’ll see it everywhere. People glom onto words and stories that are often just stand-ins for real action and meaning. Advertisers look for words that imply a product’s value and use that as a substitute for value itself. Companies constantly tell us about their commitment to excellence, implying that this means they will make only top-shelf products. Words like quality and excellence are misapplied so relentlessly that they border on meaningless. Managers scour books and magazines looking for greater understanding but settle instead for adopting a new terminology, thinking that using fresh words will bring them closer to their goals. When someone comes up with a phrase that sticks, it becomes a meme, which migrates around even as it disconnects from its original meaning. To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.

And by virtue of this relation, the concrete quality seems to represent a negation as well as realization of the universal. Snow is white but not "whiteness"; a girl may be beautiful, even a beauty, but not "beauty"; a country may be free (in comparison with others) because its people have certain liberties, but it is not the very embodiment of freedom. Moreover, the concepts are meaningful only in experienced contrast with their opposites: white with not white, beautiful with not beautiful. Negative statements can sometimes be translated into positive ones: "black" or "grey" for "not white," "ugly" for "not beautiful.

Catti-brie had to believe that now, recalling the scene in light of the drow's words. She had to believe that her love for Wulfgar had been real, very real, and not misplaced, that he was all she had thought him to be. Now she could. For the first time since Wulfgar's death, Cattie-brie could remember him without pangs of guilt, without the fears that, had he lived, she would not have married him. Because Drizzt was right; Wulfgar would have admitted the error despite his pride, and he would have grown, as he always had before. That was the finest quality of the man, an almost childlike quality, that viewed the world and his own life as getting better, as moving toward a better way in a better place. What followed was the most sincere smile on Cattie-brie's face in many, many months. She felt suddenly free, suddenly complete with her past, reconciled and able to move forward with her life. She looked at the drow, wide-eyed, with a curiosity that seemed to surprise Drizzt. She could go on, but what exactly did that mean? Slowly, Cattie-brie began shaking her head, and Drizzt came to understand that the movement had something to do with him. He lifted a slender hand and brushed some stray hair back from her cheek, his ebony skin contrasting starkly with her light skin, even in the quiet light of night. "I do love you," the drow admitted. The blunt statement did not catch Catti-brie by surprise, not at all. "As you love me," Drizzt went on, easily, confident that his words were on the mark. "And I, too, must look ahead now, must find my place among my friends, beside you, without Wulfgar." "Perhaps in the future," Catti-brie said, her voice barely a whisper. "Perhaps," Drizzt agreed. "But for now..." "Friends," Catti-brie finished. Drizzt moved his hand back from her cheek, held it in the air before her face, and she reached up and clasped it firmly. Friends

Questions are always more subversive than statements. For one thing, they are indirect. Whereas it should be crystal clear what a statement is saying and where it is leading, a good question is not so obvious, and where it leads to is hidden. For another thing, questions are involving. Whereas a statement always has a “take it or leave it” quality, and we may or may not be interested in what it tells us, there is no standing back from a well-asked question. It invites us, challenges us or intrigues us to get into it and follow it to see where it leads. In short, even a simple question can be a soft form of subversion.

Now, if on the one hand it is very satisfactory to be able to give a common ground in the theory of knowledge for the many varieties of statements concerning space, spatial configurations, and spatial relations which, taken together, constitute geometry, it must on the other hand be emphasised that this demonstrates very clearly with what little right mathematics may claim to expose the intuitional nature of space. Geometry contains no trace of that which makes the space of intuition what it is in virtue of its own entirely distinctive qualities which are not shared by “states of addition-machines” and “gas-mixtures” and “systems of solutions of linear equations”. It is left to metaphysics to make this “comprehensible” or indeed to show why and in what sense it is incomprehensible. We as mathematicians have reason to be proud of the wonderful insight into the knowledge of space which we gain, but, at the same time, we must recognise with humility that our conceptual theories enable us to grasp only one aspect of the nature of space, that which, moreover, is most formal and superficial.

Shaikh Ahmad of Sirhind (1563-1624) discussed it within the canon of theological tradition and held that ana al-haqq was a situational statement and that it represented a quality of authentic experience. The Shaikh suggested that ana—the personal "I," and al-haqq, the Truth, had no reference to a unitive condition, in fact; al-haqq completely surrounded the consciousness of the contemplative ego. Placed in this state the ana could only know the surrounding al-haqq—and simultaneously lose its own identity. It was in fact the loss of personal identity which gave significance to Hallaj's statement. The Shaikh held that ana al-haqq did not have any reference to unification either with the Divine Essence or its Attribute. Thus, ana al-haqq, as "I am the Truth," was categorically discarded by the Shaikh who interpretted the phrases as affirmation by negation. According to him, ana al-haqq did not carry the affirmatory meaning of "I am the Truth," but simply made the statement that, "I am not, He only is". Without negation of the self, the affirmation of Divine Truth remains unresolved. Hallaj had in fact affirmed the faith through negation of the contemplative ego.

Your written statement of your purpose should be similar to the following: “By the first day of January, 19…, I will have in my possession $ 50,000, which will come to me in various amounts from time to time during the interim. “In return for this money I will give the most efficient service of which I am capable, rendering the fullest possible quantity, and the best possible quality of service in the capacity of salesman of . . . . . . . . (describe the service or merchandise you intend to sell). “I believe that I will have this money in my possession. My faith is so strong that I can now see this money before my eyes. I can touch it with my hands. It is now awaiting transfer to me at the time, and in the proportion that I deliver the service I intend to render in return for it. I am awaiting a plan by which to accumulate this money, and I will follow that plan, when it is received.” Second. Repeat this program night and morning until you can see, (in your imagination) the money you intend to accumulate. Third. Place a written copy for your statement where you can see it night and morning, and read it just before retiring, and upon arising until it has been memorized.

(4) The racial issue. Voucher plans were adopted for a time in a number of southern states to avoid integration. They were ruled unconstitutional. Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate. A more difficult problem has troubled some students of vouchers. That is the possibility that voluntary choice with vouchers might increase racial and class separation in schools and thus exacerbate racial conflict and foster an increasingly segregated and hierarchical society. We believe that the voucher plan would have precisely the opposite effect; it would moderate racial conflict and promote a society in which blacks and whites cooperate in joint objectives, while respecting each other's separate rights and interests. Much objection to forced integration reflects not racism but more or less well-founded fears about the physical safety of children and the quality of their schooling. Integration has been most successful when it has resulted from choice, not coercion. Nonpublic schools, parochial and other, have often been in the forefront of the move toward integration.

Leibniz based his philosophy upon two logical premisses, the law of contradiction and the law of sufficient reason. Both depend upon the notion of an 'analytic' proposition, which is one in which the predicate is contained in the subject—for instance, 'all white men are men'. The law of contradiction states that all analytic propositions are true. The law of sufficient reason (in the esoteric system only) states that all true propositions are analytic. This applies even to what we should regard as empirical statements about matters of fact. If I make a journey, the notion of me must from all eternity have included the notion of this journey, which is a predicate of me. 'We may say that the nature of an individual substance, or complete being, is to have a notion so completed that it suffices to comprehend, and to render deducible from it, all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed. Thus the quality of king, which belongs to Alexander the Great, abstracting from the subject, is not sufficiently determined for an individual, and does not involve other qualities of the same subject, nor all that the notion of this prince contains, whereas God, seeing the individual notion or haecceity of Alexander, sees in it at the same time the foundation and the reason of all the predicates which can be truly attributed to him, as e.g. whether he would conquer Darius and Porus, even to knowing a priori (and not by experience) whether he died a natural death or by poison, which we can only know by history.

As everyone knows, Islam set up a social order from the outset, in contrast, for example, to Christianity. Islamic social teachings are so basic to the religion that still today many people, including Muslims, are completely unaware of Islam's spiritual dimensions. Social order demands rules and regulations, fear of the king, respect for the police, acknowledgement of authority. It has to be set up on the basis of God's majesty and severity. It pays primary attention to the external realm, the realm of the body and the desires of the lower soul, the realm where God is distant from the world. In contrast, Islamic spiritual teachings allow for intimacy, love, boldness, ecstatic expressions, and intoxication in the Beloved. All these are qualities that pertain to nearness to God. (...) In short, on the social level, Islam affirms the primacy of God as King, Majestic, Lord, Ruler. It establishes a theological patriarchy even if Muslim theologians refuse to apply the word father (or mother) to God. God is yang, while the world, human beings, and society are yin. Thereby order is established and maintained. Awe and distance are the ruling qualities. On the spiritual level, the picture is different. In this domain many Muslim authorities affirm the primacy of God as Merciful, Beautiful, Gentle, Loving. Here they establish a spiritual matriarchy, though again such terms are not employed. God is yin and human beings are yang. Human spiritual aspiration is accepted and welcomed by God. Intimacy and nearness are the ruling qualities. This helps explain why one can easily find positive evaluations of women and the feminine dimension of things in Sufism. (...) Again, this primacy of yin cannot function on the social level, since it undermines the authority of the law. If we take in isolation the Koranic statement, "Despair not of God's mercy surely God forgives all sins" (39:53), then we can throw the Sharia out the window. In the Islamic perspective, the revealed law prevents society from degenerating into chaos. One gains liberty not by overthrowing hierarchy and constraints, but by finding liberty in its true abode, the spiritual realm. Freedom, lack of limitation and constraint, bold expansivenessis achieved only by moving toward God, not by rebelling against Him and moving away. Attar (d. 618/1221) makes the same point more explicitly in an anecdote he tells about the great Sufi shaykh, Abu'l- Hasan Kharraqani (d. 425/1033): It is related that one night the Shaykh was busy with prayer. He heard a voice saying, "Beware, Abu'l-Hasan! Do you want me to tell people what I know about you so that they will stone you to death?" The Shaykh replied, "O God the Creator! Do You want me to tell the people what I know about Your mercy and what I see of Your generosity? Then no one will prostrate himself to You." A voice came, "You keep quiet, and so will I." Sufism is concerned with "maintaining the secret" (hifz al-sirr) for more reasons than one. The secret of God's mercy threatens the plain fact of His wrath. If "She" came out of the closet, "He" would be overthrown. But then She could not be found, for it is He who shows the way to Her door.

Again you must learn the point which comes next. Every circle, of those which are by the act of man drawn or even turned on a lathe, is full of that which is opposite to the fifth thing. For everywhere it has contact with the straight. But the circle itself, we say, has nothing in either smaller or greater, of that which is its opposite. We say also that the name is not a thing of permanence for any of them, and that nothing prevents the things now called round from being called straight, and the straight things round; for those who make changes and call things by opposite names, nothing will be less permanent (than a name). Again with regard to the definition, if it is made up of names and verbal forms, the same remark holds that there is no sufficiently durable permanence in it. And there is no end to the instances of the ambiguity from which each of the four suffers; but the greatest of them is that which we mentioned a little earlier, that, whereas there are two things, that which has real being, and that which is only a quality, when the soul is seeking to know, not the quality, but the essence, each of the four, presenting to the soul by word and in act that which it is not seeking (i.e., the quality), a thing open to refutation by the senses, being merely the thing presented to the soul in each particular case whether by statement or the act of showing, fills, one may say, every man with puzzlement and perplexity. [...] But in subjects where we try to compel a man to give a clear answer about the fifth, any one of those who are capable of overthrowing an antagonist gets the better of us, and makes the man, who gives an exposition in speech or writing or in replies to questions, appear to most of his hearers to know nothing of the things on which he is attempting to write or speak; for they are sometimes not aware that it is not the mind of the writer or speaker which is proved to be at fault, but the defective nature of each of the four instruments. The process however of dealing with all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge of that which is well constituted. [...] Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice and all other things that are honourable, though they may be good at learning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds-or if they have the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory-none of all these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice. For both must be learnt together; and together also must be learnt, by complete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, the true and the false about all that has real being. After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers. Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that man the things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men "have themselves bereft him of his wits".

This view seems to us an example of the kind of egalitarianism discussed in the preceding chapter: letting parents spend money on riotous living but trying to prevent them from spending money on improving the schooling of their children. It is particularly remarkable coming from Coons and Sugarman, who elsewhere say, "A commitment to equality at the deliberate expense of the development of individual children seems to us the final corruption of whatever is good in the egalitarian instinct"18—a sentiment with which we heartily agree. In our judgment the very poor would benefit the most from the voucher plan. How can one conceivably justify objecting to a plan, "however much it improved [the] education" of the poor, in order to avoid "government finance of" what the authors call "economic segregation," even if it could be demonstrated to have that effect? And of course, it cannot be demonstrated to have that effect. On the contrary, we are persuaded on the basis of considerable study that it would have precisely the opposite effect—though we must accompany that statement with the qualification that "economic segregation" is so vague a term that it is by no means clear what it means. The egalitarian religion is so strong that some proponents of restricted vouchers are unwilling to approve even experiments with unrestricted vouchers. Yet to our knowledge, none has ever offered anything other than unsupported assertions to support the fear that an unrestricted voucher system would foster "economic segregation." This view also seems to us another example of the tendency of intellectuals to denigrate parents who are poor. Even the very poorest can—and do—scrape up a few extra dollars to improve the quality of their children's schooling, although they cannot replace the whole of the present cost of public schooling. We suspect that add-ons would be about as frequent among the poor as among the rest, though perhaps of smaller amounts.

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure. 2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. 3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water. 4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences. 5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact. 6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.” 7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore it must be true.” 8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment. 9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him: “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. 10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,—I have your guardian's permission to address you on a subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union. Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose to turn them, you will find records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to divert by a more arduous labor than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and in looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination of hope. In any case, I shall remain,     Yours with sincere devotion,      EDWARD CASAUBON

It is interesting to note that in announcing the formation of the National Broadcasting Company, the Radio Corporation of America published a newspaper advertisement on September 14, 1926 which contained the following significant statements: Any use of radio transmission which causes the public to feel that the quality of programs is not the highest, that the use of radio is not the broadest and best use in the public interest, that it is used for political advantage or selfish power will be detrimental to the public interest in radio and, therefore, to the Radio Corporation of America. The purpose of the (National Broadcasting) Company will be to provide the best programs available for broadcasting in the United States. In order that the National Broadcasting Company may be advised as to the best type of program, that discrimination may be avoided, the the public may be assured that the broadcasting is being done in the fairest and best way, always allowing for human frailties and human performance, it has created an Advisory Council.

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Lithuanian citizens are the rudest and most animalistic I have ever seen in Europe. They have no moral, no values, and no manners. They are always starring at others, judging with their eyes of ignorance and their very small conscience, they are very rude, they are impolite wherever you go, and their customer service is horrible. They never say sorry for anything and even offend you when you complain about their mistakes and lack of proper attitude. Besides, eating in Lithuania is a huge disaster. Food is often rotten, and commonly comes with either hair, stones of even glass, as I have found many times. These people should be ashamed to be part of Europe and be removed from the European Union. They waste money as I have never seen anywhere else and are very abusive in prices. Their prices are high but their quality level is not even suitable for animals. They represent a waste on foreign investments. Their youngest generation is also a disaster: Extremely ignorant, without any respect or education, they deserve to be unemployed and starve to death. Nobody in his right mind should ever employ a Lithuanian, marry a Lithuanian or be friend with a Lithuanian. Lithuanias are always trying to use their friendships to take advantage of others, especially if such people are outsiders. Lithuanian women are gold diggers and extremely promiscuous, especially towards men of other cultures, as if their pride was built on the number of sex partners they can have from the widest variety of nations from around the globe, especially if such men are wealthy. Nevertheless, Lithuanians are also extremely racist and ignorant about the planet they live in. They are selfish, sadistic and parasitic. Probably the same could be said about all baltic countries, namely, Latvia, but for now, it is suffice to say this statement is an undoubted fact for the country in analysis. If Latvian and Lithuanian sovereignty ever end within this generation due to major unemployment, massacres and civil wars, and the vast majority of its people perish, I would say Divine justice has been made on both nations.

As long as Toyota is continually identifying “anomalies” in the manufacturing process, every single defect is seen as an opportunity to make the process better. There are, in effect, a set of rules that ensure that this happens. For example, an employee must never add value to a part until it is ready to be used in the next step of adding value. It must be done in the same way, every time. That way managers know, definitely, that the value-adding step worked with the next step in the process. That creates an environment of repeated scientific experimentation. Each time it’s done the same way constitutes a test of whether doing it that way, to those specifications, will result in perfection every time. For Toyota, the theory was embodied in the set of processes they developed to lead to defect-free manufacturing. Each activity can be seen as an individual if-then statement: “If we do this, then that will be the result.” Through this theory of manufacturing, the quality movement was born. As a consequence, the Americans took what they’d learned from their Japanese competitors to heart and the US automobile industry today churns out very reliable cars. Innovation, in a very real sense, exists in a “pre–quality revolution” state. 1 Managers accept flaws, missteps, and failure as an inevitable part of the process of innovation. They have become so accustomed to putting Band-Aids on their uneven innovation success that too often they give no real thought to what’s causing it in the first place.

Aleks Totić: Jamie—he was temperamental. He coded well. He was different from us. He was more flamboyant. We were just pretty much corn. Straight corn. He had the funny look, he had an image, he had a sense of style which was fairly foreign to us. Jim Clark: He had half of his head shaved. Some stylistic statement on his part. I completely ignored it. It did not matter to me; I did not give a hoot. He was a great programmer, brilliant young guy. I do not think anyone bothered. People have just got to realize that a computer geek is respected on the basis of how much code he can write and the quality of code he can write. People do not give a crap what he looks like. If you generate good code quickly, no one cares. Jamie made everyone a lot of money.

This brings me back to the statement that thee is no such thing as living matter. In the cell, all the parts and pieces are separate units, working precisely together, but not themselves alive. Life is not IN any of these parts and pieces, just as in your automobile, there is no automobility in any piece or part, in a spark plug or a carburetor needle. Automobility is a superior quality which coheres to the total motor car to the total motor car. Similarly, life is a super-quality that coheres to the total cell.

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.' World conquest-possession of the whole universe-given to the meek, of all people! The world thinks in terms of strength and power, of ability, self-assurance and aggressiveness. That is the world's idea of conquest and possession. The more you assert yourself and express yourself, the more you organize and manifest your powers and ability, the more likely you are to succeed and get on. But here comes this astounding statement, `Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth'-and they alone. Once more, then, we are reminded at the very beginning that the Christian is altogether different from the world. It is a difference in quality, an essential difference. He is a new man, a new creation; he belongs to an entirely different kingdom. And not only is the world unlike him; it cannot possibly understand him. He is an enigma to the world.

Al-Askarî gives examples of the high esteem shown to scholars and the important position in society they occupy, often in spite of their lowly origins which ordinarily would not have allowed them to advance far beyond their fathers’ menial situations. Much more numerous, and more interesting, are the anecdotes and remarks on the diffi culties that must be overcome on the road to knowledge. He cites the statement concerning the six qualities needed: a penetrating mind, much time, ability, hard work, a skilful teacher, and desire (or, in the parlance of our own time, “motivation,” shahwah). On his own, he adds the very elementary need for “nature,” that is, an inherited physical endowment, such as Muslim philologians of al-Askarî’s type always claimed as essential for their intellectual pursuits. The search for knowledge must be unselfi sh. As the author repeats over and over again, it is a never ending process. Persistent study sharpens the natural faculties. The hunger for knowledge is never stilled, as proclaimed by traditions ascribed to the Prophet. Stationariness means ultimate failure, according to the widely quoted saying that “man does not cease knowing as long as he studies, but once he gives up studying, he is the most ignorant of men.” Constant travel in search of knowledge and regular attendance at the teacher’s lectures are mandatory. The prospect of learning something not known before should make a man forget his home and his family and endure all possible hardships, as illustrated by an anecdote about al-Asmaî. Scholars refrain at times from certain foods as too luxurious or as harmful to the powers of memory. They study all night long.

Among the conventional adab anthologies, we encounter a somewhat different organization of the traditional material in the Kitâb Adab ad- dunyâ wa-d-dîn of al-Mâwardî (d. 450/1058).84 The five large chapters of the work deal with 1. the excellence of the intellect and intelligence and the blameworthiness of instinctive desire and blind prejudice (hawâ); 2. the âdâb of knowledge; 3. the âdâb of religion (dealing mainly with the negative aspects of the material world); 4. the âdâb of this world; and 5. the âdâb of the soul. As the plural âdâb indicates, the various ways in which intellectual, religious, practical/material, and spiritual/ethical behavior is to be practised are illustrated by preferably brief and aphoristic statements in prose and, quite often, in verse. As is to be expected, the chapter on knowledge shows no systematic arrangement. It starts out with strong expressions of praise for knowledge and the appropriate Qur- ânic citations and statements by the Prophet and early Muslim authorities. Evidence is presented for the superiority of knowledge over ignorance. The impossibility of attaining complete knowledge is explained, and the need to acquire knowledge of all kinds wherever possible is stressed. The relationship between knowledge and material possessions is explored in the usual manner. It is recommended that the process of studying begin at an early age. Knowledge is dif- cult to acquire. Again, the prevalence of ignorance is discussed. The objectionable character of using knowledge for ulterior purposes comes in for customary mention. There are sayings explaining the best methods of study and instruction, the qualities students ought to possess, the need for long and strenuous study, and the drawbacks of forgetfulness. Then, we read remarks about handwriting, about the usually bad handwriting of scholars, and about their constantly being engaged in writing. Remarks on the qualifi cations of students, the hadîth that “good questions are one half of knowledge,” and sayings about the character qualities of scholars complete the part of the work devoted to knowledge. Its predominantly secular outlook is indicated by the fact that knowledge here continues to precede the discussion of religion and ethics. The basic role conceded to the intellect with respect to both intellectual/educational and religious/ ethical activity is formally acknowledged by placing the chapter on it at the beginning, as was also the case in the work of al-Marzubânî.

I am noticing that my relationship with (write name) is going more and more smoothly. I am becoming more and more patient. I am creating a positive relationship with (write name). I am feeling closer to (write name). I am learning positive parenting skills. I am listening and observing without reacting. I am being clear, firm, and loving with (write child’s name). I am behaving in a warm and loving manner with (write partner’s name). I am spending quality time with (write name) on a regular basis. I am verbalizing caring and loving feelings to (write partner’s name). I am displaying physical affection to (write partner’s name). I am doing something for (write partner’s name) that I know will please (him/her). Practice creating Cognitive Workout statements that deal with specific relationship issues or concerns that you are currently experiencing. You can use the above list of statements to guide you.

Each of us has things we must do before we die. A meaningful life is one in which you deeply connect to your purpose. A person living life with purpose is a hero who gets up every day with a clear sense of who they are and what they are doing in the world. A clear sense of your own true purpose is one of the most important qualities you can have. Consider creating a statement of life purpose.

Rich helped me contemplate, create, and commit to a Leadership Constitution through the following guidance and focus: A constitution is an articulation of the core qualities that you are. It’s not the roles you play. It’s what you bring to the roles you play. A constitution is always expressed in the positive. There are no negative traits in a Leadership Constitution. If negative traits have found their way into your constitution, it’s a function of allowing the intellect to hijack the process. Don’t let it do that. A constitution is not aspirational. It’s not what you want or hope or strive to be “one day.” It’s who you are committed to being. In every moment. There are no qualifiers, mollifiers, softeners of any kind in a constitution. None. A constitution is not based on sentiment, past behavior, or even current behavior. Often, we have core attributes that we are not living true to. When this occurs, we experience suffering—or cause suffering for those around us. Consider that there are two valid ways to arrive at core attributes: the contemplative way—simply looking deep within and noticing—and through observing any area in which you experience suffering. Where we suffer can nearly always be traced back to a core attribute that our actions and behavior are not lining up with. A constitution is what you stand for. It’s the qualities that you are, that matter most to you, because you say so. It’s not merely what you think of yourself, and it has nothing to do with opinions you may have of yourself or judgments you may hold against yourself. It’s a bold, audacious statement of your core. A constitution, once articulated, is practiced through the act of declaring with witnesses who will hold you accountable. Rich

When having has primarily the function of satisfying the need for ever-increasing consumption, it ceases to be a condition for more being but is basically no different from “keeping-possession.” This statement may sound strange since “keeping” and “spending” are opposites. This is so indeed, if we look only at the surface. But seen dynamically, they share one fundamental quality: The miser as well as the waster is inwardly passive and unproductive. Neither is actively related to anything or anybody, neither changes and grows in the process of living; each only represents one of two different forms of non-aliveness. Showing the distinction between possession-having and use-having needs to take into account the double meaning of use: Passive use (“the consumer”) and productive use (the artisan, artist, skilled worker).

In everyday life we know that someone who is a true lover is very different from someone who is a pretender or a playboy. We know that true love should not be motivated at all by self- interest. And such is God’s love for us. It is a love that seeks the very best for us; it is sacrificial; it never stops giving. Perhaps the closest we can come to understanding the essence and quality of God’s love for us—though it is still a faint reflection of the reality—is the way in which we love our children. We bring these helpless, fragile little things home from the hospital and we love them. They have not done anything to deserve our love, indeed they are totally incapable of doing anything for us, yet we love them. From the moment we become a parent we know that from now on, life will pretty much revolve around our child and often they will inconvenience us in ways we can only dream of! Yet, we never stop loving them—really loving them. Parents and their children are a model to help us understand the way in which our Heavenly Father God really loves each one of us. As we think about how unconditionally we love our children and begin to grasp how complete and unconditional the Father’s love for us is, we can begin to scratch the surface of His grace and understand a little of the motivation behind God’s unmerited offer of salvation and forgiveness for our sins. Despite a lot of good teaching on the subject in the Church over the years, many Christians are still mystified by grace. They fail to live in the richness of it themselves and they fail to show grace to others. Many are still trapped by a performance-based theology that thinks God’s love must be earned or deserved. They think that if they behave well and perform good works for God then He will love them more. This is so far from the truth! God cannot love us any more nor any less than He does now, and He longs for us to live in the place of grace where we understand that He gives His love to us freely. God’s love and grace are gifts for us to receive. Do we ever deserve them? No! We are totally undeserving, but we are the undeserving who are the apple of His eye. GRACE AND FORGIVENESS The title of this book Grace and Forgiveness is purposefully chosen because the issue of God’s grace is vitally intertwined with the issue of forgiveness. They are not simply two distinct aspects of our spiritual life that we have decided to place together in the same book. When we come into a real understanding of the extent of God’s grace towards us and what that means, we begin to see how vital and necessary it is that we pass that grace and love on to others. Grace becomes an irresistible force in our lives. When properly understood, the “unfairness” and “injustice” of God’s grace towards us is deeply shocking, even offensive to our human understanding, as we will see. But in the same way that God lavishly and extravagantly pours His grace out upon our lives, He is calling us to learn how to show grace to others by forgiving those who truly don’t deserve it. The great discovery of forgiveness is that, through a selfless act, we open ourselves up to a greater outpouring of the blessing of God on our lives. There are two important things that every Christian needs to realize at some point in their journey as a believer, preferably sooner rather than later! The first is that our God is very big and very powerful and there is nothing that He cannot do. The second is that He is very loving and compassionate towards us. The Bible says that “God is love”. This is not a statement about what He does, but about who He is. He is the very embodiment of perfect, flawless love. His heart for us is to see us living our spiritual lives where we are operating with the dynamics of His Kingdom, just as Jesus did. It is a Kingdom of love, filled with faith, aware of the bigness of our God; aware of His willingness to interact with us and do things for us as we act in loving obedience to Him.

I want to show you something,” he said, his voice dropping a little lower than usual and causing a shiver to run down my spine. “What?” I asked. “I said show, not tell. You have to come with me.” Curiosity nagged at me and the champagne urged me into recklessness. He’d promised to be nice after all, so why not? And even though I’d said I wanted to go back to the snooze fest party, I didn’t really. Given the choice, I’d just head back to the Academy. “You’d better not be about to whip your junk out again,” I warned. “Because I’ve seen way too much of you for my liking.” “Oh I think you liked it just fine,” he countered and the heat that flooded my cheeks at his tone stopped me from raising any further argument on the subject. He stepped a little closer to me and I fought against the impulse to lean in. “Come on then, don’t keep me in suspense,” I demanded though a little voice in the back of my head wondered if I meant something else by that statement. Darius’s mouth hooked up at one side and he inclined his head to yet another door on the other side of the room. I followed him as he led the way through the manor to a grand atrium before opening the door onto a dark stairwell which led down to what must have been an underground chamber. I eyed him warily but at this point I was pretty sure he’d have attacked me already if he was going to. Darius Acrux may have been a lot of things but it seemed he was a man of his word; he’d promised to be nice to me tonight and that was what he was delivering. I’d have to keep an eye on the time though, at midnight his Cinderella spell might come undone and he’d turn back into an asshole shaped pumpkin. Lights came on automaticaly as we descended and at the foot of the stairs, he opened another door and led me out into into an underground parking lot. I eyed the row of flashy sports cars in every make and model imaginable but he didn’t pause by them, instead leading me to the far end of the lot. A smile tugged at my lips as I spotted the lineup of super bikes. They were all top of the range, ultra-sleek, ultra-beautiful speed machines. My fingers tingled with the desire to touch them as the tempting allure of adrenaline called to me. “You said you could ride,” Darius said, offering me a genuine smile. “So I thought maybe you’d like to see my collection.” Damn, the way he said ‘my collection’ made me want to punch the entitlement right out of him but I didn’t miss the fire burning in his eyes as he looked at the bikes. That was a passion I knew well. He was a sucker for my kind of temptation too. “Have you done any modifications on them?” I asked, reaching out to brush my fingers along the saddle of the closest red beauty. “They’re top of the line,” he said dismissively like I didn’t know what I was looking at. “They don’t need any mods.” I snorted derisively. So he liked to ride the pretty speed machines but he didn’t know how to work on them. “Figures pretty boy wouldn’t know how to get his hands dirty,” I teased. “Maybe the kinds of bikes you’re used to riding need work to make them perform better but this kind of quality doesn’t require any extras. Besides, I could just pay someone to do it for me even if they did.” “Of course you could. That’s not really the point though.” And he was wrong about the kinds of bikes I was used to riding. I spotted four models amongst his collection which I’d ridden within the last six months. The others could easily be mine with a little bit of time and a tool or two. Not that I felt the need to tell him that. “You wanna take one for a ride?” he offered. “You can test your supposed skill against mine; there’s a circuit to the west of the estate.” My eyes widened at that offer. I’d missed riding since coming to the Academy and I hadn’t really thought I’d be able to get out again any time soon. ...

Seek clarity on who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning. As every project or major initiative begins, you ask questions such as “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this?” “How should I treat others?” “What are my intentions and objectives?” “What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment?” High performers ask these types of questions not only at the beginning of an endeavor but consistently throughout. They don’t just “get clarity” once and develop a mission statement that lasts the test of time; they consistently seek clarity again and again as times change and as they take on new projects or enter new social situations. This kind of routine self-monitoring is one of the hallmarks of their success. Generate energy so that you can maintain focus, effort, and wellbeing. To stay on your A game, you’ll need to actively care for your mental stamina, physical energy, and positive emotions in very specific ways. Raise the necessity for exceptional performance. This means actively tapping into the reasons you absolutely must perform well. This necessity is based on a mix of your internal standards (e.g., your identity, beliefs, values, or expectations for excellence) and external demands (e.g., social obligations, competition, public commitments, deadlines). It’s about always knowing your why and stoking that fire all the time so you feel the needed drive or pressure to get at it. Increase productivity in your primary field of interest. Specifically, focus on prolific quality output (PQO) in the area in which you want to be known and to drive impact. You’ll also have to minimize distractions (including opportunities) that steal your attention from creating PQO. Develop influence with those around you. It will make you better at getting people to believe in and support your efforts and ambitions. Unless you consciously develop a positive support network, major achievements over the long haul are all but impossible. Demonstrate courage by expressing your ideas, taking bold action, and standing up for yourself and others, even in the face of fear, uncertainty, threat, or changing conditions. Courage is not an occasional act, but a trait of choice and will.

At this stage in our discussion, the important thing has been simply to point out that our world is so religious that objects and actions of the most materialistic kind, those seemingly most devoid of depth, are transformed into religious phenomena. The whole person is now committed at that level. That is what makes the dispute on this ground so fundamental. It is very bad that some people should be undernourished while others succumb from overconsumption, that there should be misery and injustice. It is obvious that we should struggle against hunger, misery, and unequal distribution. But that reasonable proposition is rejected by the judges. According to them, what I have just written is the statement of a heartless man, who moreover is a rightist. Those things should be talked about at the height of excitement, of indignation, with sacred fury, with voice trembling and eyes flashing despair and fire. That people should go hungry is the absolute in suffering. That there should be inequality of consumption is an absolute evil. This fury, this urgency, the quality of the ultimate in the arguments in this domain, the totalitarian nature attributed to these things, which excludes everything else and treats other problems as secondary, which makes it possible to decide exactly what is good and what is to be condemned, which involves the whole of humanity in the application-all this attests, more than anything else, to the religious character of consumption. The debate over "have/have not" has become a war of religion (I said "over," not "between").

Robert Marzano (2007, p. 150) reviewed 100 studies related to classroom management. His metaanalysis found that “teachers who had high-quality relationships with their students had 31 percent fewer discipline problems, rule violations, and related problems over a year’s time than did teachers who did not have high-quality relationships with their students.” That means the outcome is 31% fewer negative interactions and 31% or more positive interactions with students—interactions that can include statements and questions that develop social-emotional learning. For

God is not a necessity for religion. Buddhism does not believe in God, Jainism does not believe in God. So try to understand, because in the West it is a problem. You are aware only of three religions which are all rooted in Judaism: Christianity, Judaism and Mohammedanism. All three believe in God. So you are not aware of Buddha – he never believed in God. I am reminded of H.G.Wells, his statement about Gautam Buddha. He said, “He is the most godless person, yet the most godly.” A godless person, and godly? Do you think there is any contradiction? There is no contradiction. Buddha never believed in God, there was no need. He was so utterly fulfilled that his whole fulfillment became a fragrance around him. Mahavira never believed in God, yet his life was as divine as life can be. So when I say God is a fiction, please do not misunderstand me. God is a fiction but godliness is not a fiction; that is a quality. “God” is a person…as a person it is a fiction. There is no God sitting in heaven creating the world. And do you think a God would create such a mess that you call the world? Then what is left for the Devil? If anybody has created this world it must be the Devil, it cannot be God.

worth noting the distinction between doubting the work and doubting yourself. An example of doubting the work would be, “I don’t know if my song is as good as it can be.” Doubting yourself might sound like, “I can’t write a good song.” These statements are worlds apart, both in accuracy and in impact on the nervous system. Doubting yourself can lead to a sense of hopelessness, of not being inherently fit to take on the task at hand. All or nothing thinking is a nonstarter. However, doubting the quality of your work might, at times, help to improve it. You can doubt your way to excellence. If you have an imperfect version of a work you really love, you may find that when it finally seems perfect, you don’t love it in the same way. This is a sign the imperfect version was actually the one. The work is not about perfection.

a picture of a future you seek to create, described in the present tense, as if it were happening now. A statement of ‘our vision’ shows where we want to go, and what it will be like when we get there... The more richly detailed and visual the image is, the more compelling it will be. Because of its tangible and immediate quality, a vision gives shape and direction to the organization’s future. And it helps people set goals to take the organization closer. It

Richard Feynman had to say this about energy in his 1961 lecture: “There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law – it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.” All significant philosophers and scientists throughout history were in their own right, right if we consider the context, time, and place, the point from which they observed the world by the means available to them. If we understand this context, we know how much harder it was for them to decipher the world previously unknown, except as an experience without fundamental and deeper understanding. In this sense, all these philosophers and scientists were, in a way, “right,” even when they were “not” right. Correctness or wrongness of their ideas and opinions shall be measured more by how they helped our understanding and ideas developed directly from their thoughts. Even if they were in some way wrong, great ideas helped our ideas develop and allowed the formation and formulations of great ideas that will follow. Quality and potential of insights and ideas are more important than strict correctness without any potential. Progress in human history would not be possible without following the traces of long-bygone giants (as Newton understood them). We can hardly produce any new important question that ancient Greek philosophers did not pose. The whole idea of Western philosophy, as it is, would not be possible without the ancient Greeks. This statement holds even when we talk about the modern era’s greatest philosophers, starting with Descartes and culminating in the works of the great German philosophers Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, the Dutch Spinoza, and others. Almost all central questions or problems treated by these philosophers were already postulated, discussed, or touched, directly or indirectly, by the great ancient philosophers who paved the way for the others.

What is quality in thought and statement?" [Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]

with respect to ourselves, we must surface, as well as find ways to overcome or eliminate those blemishes, flaws, or contradictions that generate mistrust and discord, so that these negative qualities either alienate us from one another or set us against one another, thereby destroy our internal harmony, paralyze us, and make it difficult to cope with an uncertain, ever changing world at large. In opposite fashion we must emphasize those cultural traditions, previous experiences and unfolding events that build up harmony and trust, thereby create those implicit bonds that permit us as individuals and as a society, or as an organic whole, to shape as well as adapt to the course of events in the world.74 With respect to adversaries we should reveal those harsh statements that adversaries make about us – particularly those that denigrate our culture, our achievements, our fitness to exist, etc. – as a basis to show that our survival and place in the scheme of things is not necessarily a birthright, but is always at risk.

Gibbs (2003) and others (e.g., Straus, Richardson, Glaziou, & Haynes, 2005) have provided detailed suggestions in this regard. Some general principles for clinicians are as follows. Evidence from multiple studies is always preferred to results of a single study. Systematic reviews of research are preferable to traditional narrative reviews. Thus, clinicians should look for systematic reviews, mindful of the fact that these reviews vary in quality. The Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations are good sources of high-quality systematic reviews. Clinicians can and should assess potential sources of bias in any review. The characteristics of systematic reviews described in this chapter can be used as a yardstick that clinicians can use to judge how well specific reviews measure up. The QUOROM statement (Moher et al., 1999) provides guidance about what to look for in reports on systematic reviews, as does a recent report by Shea et al. (2007). When relevant reviews are not available, out of date, or potentially biased, clinicians can identify individual studies and assess the credibility of those studies, using one of many tools developed for this purpose (e.g., Gibbs, 2003). It would be ideal if clinicians were able to rely on others to produce valid research syntheses. Above all, clinicians should remember that critical thinking is crucial to understanding and using evidence. Authorities, expert opinion, and lists of ESTs provide insufficient evidence for sound clinical practice. Further, clinicians must determine how credible evidence relates to the particular needs, values, preferences, circumstances, and ultimately, the responses of their clients. Clinicians and researchers also need to have an effect on policy so that EBP is not interpreted in a way that unfairly restricts treatments. Policymakers and others can be educated about the nature of EBP. EBP is a process aimed at informing the choices that clinicians make. It should inform and enhance practice, “increasing, not dictating, choice” (Dickersin, Straus, & Bero, 2007, p. s10). EBP supports choices among alternative treatments that have similar effects. It supports the choice of a less effective alternative, when an effective treatment is not acceptable to a client. Policymakers and others can be educated about the nature of evidence and methods of research synthesis. Empirical evidence is tentative, and it evolves over time as new information is added to the knowledge base. At present, there is insufficient evidence about the effectiveness of most psychological and psychosocial treatments (including some so-called empirically supported treatments). Policymakers need to understand that most lists of effective treatments are not based on rigorous systematic reviews; thus, they are not necessarily based on sound evidence. It makes little sense to base policy decisions on lists of preferred treatments because this limits consumer choice. Lists of selected or preferred treatments should not restrict the use of other potentially effective treatments. Policies that restrict treatments that have been shown to be harmful or ineffective, however, are of benefit. Lists of harmful or wasteful treatments could be compiled to discourage their use.

One of the best ways to ensure that you are creating an effective main character is to spend some time really getting to know her. Some writers do this by writing a simple character sketch about their main character, detailing her likes and dislikes, her goal, her motivation, her age and personal history, and her physical qualities. (The character worksheet on page 90 guides you in writing a character sketch.) Other writers find it easier to let their characters “talk” to them by writing a letter from their main character to themselves. Some writers prefer “interviewing” the main character as if she were actually in the same room. Still others write a character statement in which the character speaks in first person about herself. These latter exercises have the advantage of actually establishing that character's voice. Both methods will allow you to get to know your character more intimately. And, while all of the character traits and details that you develop during this exercise probably won't be worked into the story, you'll know them, and this will help you maintain your character consistently and help you focus the character's motivation.

An Alternative to Goals A reporter once asked an official from Toyota whether the company achieved “six sigma” quality—a defect rate of around 3 in a million and also the name of a quality improvement methodology that is currently fashionable. His answer typifies the Boyd approach to goals: Basically, I would say that because of our evolutionary concept, whatever we were doing becomes the benchmark for what we do next. We hold onto what we were doing so that it becomes maintainable and it is the new steady state.140 This may seem like a masterwork of obfuscation, but it is entirely consistent with Toyota’s overall guiding concept: The Toyota Production System, quite simply, is about shortening the time it takes to convert customer orders into vehicle deliveries.141 This is one of the best vision / focusing statements in the world of business. Instead of setting arbitrary goals, it tells everybody who works for Toyota that whenever they are in doubt about what to do, take the action that will reduce customer-to-delivery span time. It sets a direction, not a goal, since wherever we are this year, we will be better next year.

STEWARDSHIP DELEGATION Stewardship delegation is focused on results instead of methods. It gives people a choice of method and makes them responsible for results. It takes more time in the beginning, but it’s time well invested. You can move the fulcrum over, you can increase your leverage, through stewardship delegation. Stewardship delegation involves clear, up-front mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas. DESIRED RESULTS. Create a clear, mutual understanding of what needs to be accomplished, focusing on what, not how; results, not methods. Spend time. Be patient. Visualize the desired result. Have the person see it, describe it, make out a quality statement of what the results will look like, and by when they will be accomplished. GUIDELINES. Identify the parameters within which the individual should operate. These should be as few as possible to avoid methods delegation, but should include any formidable restrictions. You wouldn’t want a person to think he had considerable latitude as long as he accomplished the objectives, only to violate some long-standing

All you need to do is write a set of self-talk statements that affirm the qualities you want in an area and then repeat them daily.

financial statements classify advertising costs as expenses, they are often better conceived of as investments. This reclassification makes sense because advertising is also a far more flexible expenditure than most costs. Amid challenging economic times, advertising can be scaled back relatively quickly, adding agility to protect and manage cash flows. However,

Appendix 1 Our Family's Core Values and Mission YOUR CORE VALUES What are the most important values in your family? Do your kids know these are critical? Do both parents agree on the ranking of values? This worksheet will help you develop and communicate your top values. A "value" is an ideal that is desirable. It is a quality that we want to model in our own lives and see developed in the lives of our kids. For instance, honesty is a very important value, for without it you can't have trust in your relationships. Take time in writing your answers to the following questions. 1. When time and energy are in short supply, what should we make sure we cover in parenting our children? List a few ideas. Then circle the nonnegotiables. 2. What are the "we'd like to get around to these" values? These are the semi-negotiables. 3. What were the top three values of each of your families of origin (the family you grew up in)? Father Mother 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. Think about a healthy, positive family-one that serves as a role model for you. What would you say are their top three values? 1. 2. 3. 5. What are three or four favorite Scripture verses that communicate elements of a healthy family? 1. 2. 3. 4. Based on these verses, what are the three or four principles from Scripture that you'd like to see evidenced in your family? 1. 2. 3. 4. 6. What values are your "pound the table with passion" values? What are the ones that you feel very strongly about? (You may already have them listed.) To help you with this, complete the following sentences: More families need to ... The problem with today's families is ... DEVELOPING YOUR FAMILY'S MISSION STATEMENT Besides writing out your core values, you will do well to develop a family mission statement (or covenant). These important documents will shape your family. The founders of the United States knew that guiding documents would keep us on course as a fledgling democracy; so too will these documents guide your family as you seek to be purposeful. Sample mission statement: We exist to love each other and advance Gods timeless principles and his kingdom on earth. Complete the following: 1. Our family exists to ... 2. What are some activities or behaviors that you imagine your family carrying out? 3. Describe some qualities of character that you can envision your family being known for. 4. What is unique about your family? What makes you different? What are you known for? What sets you apart? 5. What do you hope to do with and through your family that will outlive you? What noble cause greater than yourselves do you want your family to pursue? 6. With these five questions completed, look for a Scripture that supports the basic ideas of your rough-draft concepts for your family mission statement. If there are several candidates, talk about them thoughtfully and choose one, writing it out here: 7. Using the sample as a template, your five questions and your family Scripture, write a rough draft of your family mission statement: 8. Rewrite the mission statement, keeping the same concepts but changing the order of the mission statement. This is simply to give you two options. 9. Discuss this mission statement as a family if the kids are old enough. Discuss it with a few other friends or extended family members. Any feedback? 10. Pray about your family mission statement for a couple of weeks, asking God to affirm it or help you edit it. Then write up the final version. Consider making a permanent version of your family mission statement to hang on a wall in your home.

The one thing I've found can turn everything around is simply changing one's language patterns from dis-empowering statements and dis-empowering questions to instead asking high quality questions. 

It should not be surprising that ethical statements are not empirically verifiable, since right and wrong are not empirically observable qualities. But neither are they simply emotive expressions.

AS IF THE abstracting qualities of numbers and scale aren’t enough to deal with when trying to run an organization, these days we have the added complication of the virtual world. The Internet is nothing short of awe inspiring. It gives the power to operate at scale or spread ideas to anyone, be it a small business or a social movement. It gives us the ability to find and connect with people more easily. And it is incredible at speeding the pace of commercial transactions. All of these things are good. But, just as money was developed to help expedite and simplify transactions by allowing payment to be rendered without barter, we often use the Internet as a means to expedite and simplify communication and the relationships we build. And just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real. We can, indeed, get bursts of serotonin when people “like” our pictures, pages or posts or when we watch ourselves go up in a ranking (you know how much serotonin loves a ranking). The feelings of admiration we get from virtual “likes” or the number of followers we have is not like the feelings of admiration we get from our children, or that a coach gets from their players. It is simply a public display of “like” with no sacrifice required—a new kind of status symbol, if you will. Put simply, though the love may feel real, the relationship is still virtual. Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.

AICPA peer review checklists are free and can be obtained by Googling “AICPA Peer Review Checklist.” Use the most recent checklist (they often change). Minimum Documentation SSARS 21 states that the minimum documentation requirements are as follows: Establish your firm’s minimum work paper documentation. What work papers are required for each type of engagement? Will your firm require the preparer to sign off on each work paper? When the partner or manager reviews the work papers, will she initial each reviewed work paper or just a summary review sheet? Authority to Issue Determine who has the authority to issue financial statements and compilation reports. Here are a few questions to consider: •Who has authority to issue financial statements using the preparation guidance? •Who has authority to issue financial statements using the compilation guidance? •Will your firm require a second partner review of each initial preparation engagement? •Will annual compilation reports be reviewed by a second partner? Quality Control - A Simple Summary •Well-designed templates will: ·Enhance your firm’s compliance with professional standards, and ·Increase your efficiency •Create templates for those work products that you expect to issue most often (e.g., tax-basis preparation financial statements) •In developing your templates: ·Include the minimum required work papers and reports ·Vet your templates using the AICPA peer review checklists •Determine who has the authority to issue different work products (e.g., preparation, compilation, monthly, annual)

This poster in a Nordstrom’s department store once caught my attention: “The only difference between stores is the way they treat their customers.” That’s a bold statement. Most stores would advertise the quality of their merchandise or their wide selection as what sets them apart from the rest. The difference between Nordstrom’s and other stores, according to an employee of the competition, is that other stores are organization-oriented; Nordstrom’s is people-oriented. Their employees are trained to respond quickly and kindly to customer complaints. As a result, according to writer Nancy Austin, “Nordstrom’s doesn’t have customers; it has fans.” A study by TARP, Technical Assistance

These qualities are beautifully encapsulated in the famous statement of Victor Frankl, himself a survivor of Auschwitz (and a neurologist and psychologist): “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” MBSR,

It is frequently quite easy for people to recognize that they can move from a dull dialogue to a much more varied and colorful one by expressing feelings that they are aware of. Sometimes, however, we are not aware of the feelings that are there to be expressed. A director can then be helpful by asking: “Do you remember the last time that prayer was exciting or interesting for you? What were you talking about?” And then: “What happened to that topic?” Often after pondering such questions, we recognize that prayer went dull when a difficult topic came up between God and us, and we chose not to pursue it. The prayer will remain dull until we come back to that topic. When we do, the change from dullness to new interest is often dramatic. This characteristic of the dialogue with God in prayer can keep prayer firmly linked to the dialogue with God in life outside prayer. If a man is troubled by the way his wife and he are interacting, for example, and yet does not permit himself even to advert to the trouble in prayer, he may well find that his prayer is boring. The prayer, in other words, lets him know that he is not being himself with God. Attention to the quality of the dialogue with God helps us discern where we may be blinding ourselves to the light in our lives. Thus, one of the major criteria for the authenticity of our prayer and our lives is: “Is the dialogue working?” In other words, “Do I have something to say to God that means something to me? Is God somehow communicating to me something that seems to mean something to God?” If these questions cannot be answered affirmatively, the person would do well to ask God what has gone wrong. “Is there something you want to say to me that I don’t want to hear? Or is there something I don’t want to tell you?” By paying attention to the quality of the dialogue the person can learn to become more and more deeply transparent with God. The procedure could not be simpler. When we are expressing attitudes that are real and deep within us and relevant to our lives, prayer will be alive and engaging. When we are not, prayer will go dead. The director who has become accustomed to the fact that very often difficulties in prayer are due to the suppression of important attitudes and feelings does not quickly encourage directees to accept at face value statements like: “I had no time for prayer,” or “I prayed only on the run.” The director tends to ask what was happening the last time the prayer was alive.   M

As a former consultant, I can tell you that many tout engagement as a panacea. They measure engagement through a short questionnaire, typically including statements like: “I have a best friend at work,” “In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work,” or “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.” My chief HR officer friends tell me that engagement surveys fail to tell them how to improve. If your scores are low, do you raise them by somehow convincing more employees to be best friends? Or, if profits are low, is the best fix to start praising people more? We do measure some similar topics at Google (along with dozens more), but don’t merge them into a single all-encompassing construct like engagement. We see better results by instead understanding very specific areas like career development or manager quality.

By purity we just mean things as they are. When something is added, that is impure. When something becomes dualistic, that is not pure. If you think you will get something from practicing zazen, already you are involved in impure practice. It is all right to say there is practice, and there is enlightenment, but we should not be caught by the statement. You should not be tainted by it. When you practice zazen, just practice zazen. If enlightenment comes, it just comes. We should not attach to the attainment. The true quality of zazen is always there, even if you are not aware of it, so forget all about what you think you may have gained from it. Just do it. The quality of zazen will express itself; then you will have it.

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Basic needs The second-most frequent definition of peace involved basic needs and poverty. Many people told us that there exists no peace without a minimum of material well-being. As a thirty-five-year-old woman in Ruhororo told us: ‘How can you have peace if your stomach is empty?’ Indeed, the image that dominates this category is overwhelmingly the empty stomach: no peace can exist on an empty stomach. It is not only women telling us that. Here is a quote from a twenty-nine-year-old male migrant peanut seller in Musaga: ‘Peace is foremost having bread. If my children and those of my neighbors don’t cry of hunger at night I have peace in my heart.’ Different assumptions seem to underlie this statement. First, people are clearly telling us that, for them, peace means nothing without improvements in the quality of life. This confirms scholarship: as Tony Addison (2003: 1) states so well: ‘The end of war saves lives – including those of the poor who are often its main victims – but it may not deliver much if any improvement in livelihoods.’ This is confirmed by the fact that this definition seems to occur most frequently in places where there has been major suffering from the war and where there is significant social discontent that nothing has changed since the end of the war (Ruhororo; Kamenge). Second,

Here is why the wellbeing economy comes at the right time. At the international level there have been some openings, which can be exploited to turn the wellbeing economy into a political roadmap. The first was the ratification of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. The SDGs are a loose list of 17 goals, ranging from good health and personal wellbeing to sustainable cities and communities as well as responsible production and consumption. They are a bit scattered and inconsistent, like most outcomes of international negotiations, but they at least open up space for policy reforms. For the first time in more than a century, the international community has accepted that the simple pursuit of growth presents serious problems. Even when it comes at high speed, its quality is often debatable, producing social inequalities, lack of decent work, environmental destruction, climate change and conflict. Through the SDGs, the UN is calling for a different approach to progress and prosperity. This was made clear in a 2012 speech by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who explicitly connected the three pillars of sustainable development: ‘Social, economic and environmental wellbeing are indivisible.’82 Unlike in the previous century, we now have a host of instruments and indicators that can help politicians devise different policies and monitor results and impacts throughout society. Even in South Africa, a country still plagued by centuries of oppression, colonialism, extractive economic systems and rampant inequality, the debate is shifting. The country’s new National Development Plan has been widely criticised because of the neoliberal character of the main chapters on economic development. Like the SDGs, it was the outcome of negotiations and bargaining, which resulted in inconsistencies and vagueness. Yet, its opening ‘vision statement’ is inspired by a radical approach to transformation. What should South Africa look like in 2030? The language is uplifting: We feel loved, respected and cared for at home, in community and the public institutions we have created. We feel understood. We feel needed. We feel trustful … We learn together. We talk to each other. We share our work … I have a space that I can call my own. This space I share. This space I cherish with others. I maintain it with others. I am not self-sufficient alone. We are self-sufficient in community … We are studious. We are gardeners. We feel a call to serve. We make things. Out of our homes we create objects of value … We are connected by the sounds we hear, the sights we see, the scents we smell, the objects we touch, the food we eat, the liquids we drink, the thoughts we think, the emotions we feel, the dreams we imagine. We are a web of relationships, fashioned in a web of histories, the stories of our lives inescapably shaped by stories of others … The welfare of each of us is the welfare of all … Our land is our home. We sweep and keep clean our yard. We travel through it. We enjoy its varied climate, landscape, and vegetation … We live and work in it, on it with care, preserving it for future generations. We discover it all the time. As it gives life to us, we honour the life in it.83 I could have not found better words to describe the wellbeing economy: caring, sharing, compassion, love for place, human relationships and a profound appreciation of what nature does for us every day. This statement gives us an idea of sufficiency that is not about individualism, but integration; an approach to prosperity that is founded on collaboration rather than competition. Nowhere does the text mention growth. There’s no reference to scale; no pompous images of imposing infrastructure, bridges, stadiums, skyscrapers and multi-lane highways. We make the things we need. We, as people, become producers of our own destiny. The future is not about wealth accumulation, massive

make her life better.  She deserved that much from me.  One that will stay with me so that people can understand.  This is not me trying to suggest that people who are given this kind of diagnosis can’t have any quality of life.  This is not me making any kind of statement

make her life better.  She deserved that much from me.  One that will stay with me so that people can understand.  This is not me trying to suggest that people who are given this kind of diagnosis can’t have any quality of life.  This is not me making any kind of statement about chronic illness or disability.  This is about me and what I want from my own life.  It’s about me making a choice to go before I suffer.

The Misbâh has chapters on “knowledge” (- ilm, ch. 62), “certain knowledge” ( yaqîn, ch. 88), “wisdom” (hikmah, ch. 99), and “ignorance” ( jahl, ch. 77). The chapters are spread over the whole, work seemingly without any clear motivation justifying their insertion in the particular places in which they are found. “Jafar” starts, of course, with the praise of knowledge as he does with the blame of ignorance whose progress is darkness42 and whose recession is light. He is concerned with clarifying the particular aspect of knowledge that is referred to in such common traditions as the search for knowledge being a duty, the search for knowledge to be extended even as far as China,43 and the knowledge about one’s soul being the knowledge of the Lord.44 In the first case, the knowledge intended is the knowledge of the fear of God and of certainty (- ilm at-taqwâ wa-l-yaqîn); in the sec- ond, the knowledge about (ma- rifah) the soul/self which includes the knowledge about the Lord; and in the third (where this last knowledge is particularly speci- ed), the knowledge that requires acting in accordance with it and which is “sincere devotion” (ikhlâs). The theme of the necessity of acting with sincere devotion is then elaborated by means of statements castigating useless knowledge and stressing the fact that just a small amount of knowledge supports a large amount of life-long work. An inscription found and deciphered by Jesus and a revelation received by David likewise indicate the need for action. “Knowledge” is the only way leading to God. The true “knower” is identi- ed by his prayers, his piety, and his actions, and not by his appearance, his pre- tensions, and his words. True knowledge has always been sought in the past by those possessing intelligence, devotion (nusk), modesty (bashful- ness, hayâ), and the fear of God (khashyah); today it is sought by men not possessing any of these qualities. Statements concerning the qualities required of teachers and students conclude “Jafar's chapter on knowledge. Knowledge, for “Jafar,” is the result of introspection, a response within the individual to the divine. But it is also the result of a process of teaching and studying, and it must - find expression in relevant human activity. The whole would seem to be a mixture of moderate Shîah views of revealed and inspired knowledge and the “orthodox” concern with the methodology of the transmission of traditions and their practi- cal legal signi- cance.

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By the first day of January, 19.., I will have in my possession $50, 000, which will come to me in various amounts from time to time during the interim. “In return for this money I will give the most efficient service of which I am capable, rendering the fullest possible quantity, and the best possible quality of service in the capacity of salesman of . . . . . . . . . . . (describe the service or merchandise you intend to sell). “I believe that I will have this money in my possession. My faith is so strong that I can now see this money before my eyes. I can touch it with my hands. It is now awaiting transfer to me at the time, and in the proportion that I deliver the service I intend to render in return for it. I am awaiting a plan by which to accumulate this money, and I will follow that plan, when it is received.” Second. Repeat this program night and morning until you can see, (in your imagination) the money you intend to accumulate. Third. Place a written copy of your statement where you can see it night and morning, and read it just before retiring, and upon arising until it has been memorized. Remember, as you carry out these instructions, that you are applying the principle of auto-suggestion, for the purpose of giving orders to your subconscious mind. Remember, also, that your subconscious mind will act ONLY upon instructions which are emotionalized, and handed over to it with “feeling.” FAITH is the strongest, and most productive of the emotions. Follow the instructions given in the chapter on FAITH.

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Patience has its limits. This statement is true for anyone who has tasted the qualities of true leadership.

I would also add to that statement, if you are the biggest income earner in your group, you need two new groups. (laugh!) As I always say, you must practice associating with OQP (Only Quality People). These are the people who can take you places that you cannot go by yourself. You may have to change the people around you. One goose can fly 75 percent further in formation with other geese than it ever can flying solo. The same principle applies to you! You can run faster and further with a hundred people who want to go where you are going than you can with one hanging around your neck. But the truth is sometimes it can be hard to find nourishing relationships in your current environment. Get into a new environment! Take time to research clubs, groups, organizations and associations that share your interests and vision. Upgrade your circle! Ensure those around you match your HUNGER!

Viktor Frankl shared a brilliant insight about developing mission statements. He said, “The thing I learned is that you don’t invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were.” You see, everyone has special gifts, unique qualities, and characteristics. And they need to work inwardly until they detect those aspects.

even though there was probably some truth in a lot of science fiction work being a low-quality genre, it’s possible to say the same thing about everything else. His statement became known as Sturgeon’s Law.