Unsuccessful Person Quotes

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The successful person and the unsuccessful person are looking at the same world; the difference between them is what they see.
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
I still can't figure out if it's bravery or cowardice to take your own life. I can't figure out whether it's being selfish, or selfless. It is the ultimate act of letting go of oneself, or a cheap act of self-possession? People say a failed attempt is a cry for help. I guess that's true if the person meant it to be unsuccessful. But then, I guess most failed attempts aren't entirely sincere, because, let's face it, if you want to off yourself, there are plenty of ways to make sure it works.
Neal Shusterman (Challenger Deep)
In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation and freezing are based on the evolution of survival behaviors. When threatened or injured, all animals draw from a "library" of possible responses. We orient, dodge, duck, stiffen, brace, retract, fight, flee, freeze, collapse, etc. All of these coordinated responses are somatically based- they are things that the body does to protect and defend itself. It is when these orienting and defending responses are overwhelmed that we see trauma. The bodies of traumatized people portray "snapshots" of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. For example, when we prepare to fight or to flee, muscles throughout our entire body are tensed in specific patterns of high energy readiness. When we are unable to complete the appropriate actions, we fail to discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations. This energy becomes fixed in specific patterns of neuromuscular readiness. The person then stays in a state of acute and then chronic arousal and dysfunction in the central nervous system. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word- they have become stuck in an aroused state. It is difficult if not impossible to function normally under these circumstances.
Peter A. Levine
Successful people do daily what unsuccessful people do occasionally. They practice daily disciplines. They implement systems for their personal growth. They make it a habit to maintain a positive attitude. At
John C. Maxwell (Good Leaders Ask Great Questions: Your Foundation for Successful Leadership)
The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful ones know that the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse.
Jay Samit (Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation)
Everyone has it in them to express themselves that fundamental thing that they know they are inside. That rather beautiful afraid person. Which might get translated into aggression, or silence, or shyness, or all kinds of other things. But inside we know that we are huggable and lovable, and we want to love and be loved. That person is yearning for fulfillment. To be the person they know they can be and that’s a constant journey; that’s a process. It’s not acquiring about this thing and then that thing, getting to this place, learning this technique, and finding out how this works. It’s about the fact that other people are always more interesting than oneself. Let’s forget what successful people have in common, if there’s a thing unsuccessful people have in common it’s that they talk about themselves all the time.
Stephen Fry
The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it’s hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than that one should never be dependent. Hence the novice or still unsuccessful writer, who has enough trouble believing in himself, has the added burden of shame. It’s hard to be a good writer and a guilty person; a lack of self-respect creeps into one’s prose.
John Gardner (On Becoming a Novelist)
Had he ever lost his heart so much to something, had he ever loved any person thus, thus blindly, thus sufferingly, thus unsuccessfully, and yet thus happily?
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)
The unsuccessful person neither thinks nor acts; the average person either thinks or acts; the successful person thinks and then acts!
Orrin Woodward
Difference between a successful and an unsuccessful person is not the action but the vision.
Debasish Mridha
Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain.
Eric Greitens (Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life)
A single person is a manageable entity, whom you can either make friends with or leave alone. But half of a married couple is not exactly a whole human being: if the marriage is successful it is something a little more than that; if unsuccessful, a little less. In either case, a fresh complication is added to the already intricate business of friendship: as Clem had once remarked, you might as well try to dance a tarantella with a Siamese twin.
Jan Struther (Mrs. Miniver)
This old dead hero had one only daughter left of his race; a beauty that, to describe her truly, one need say only, she was female to the noble male; the beautiful black Venus to our young Mars; as charming in her person as he, and of delicate virtues. I have seen an hundred white men sighing after her, and making a thousand vows at her feet, all vain, and unsuccessful; and she was, indeed, too great for any, but a prince of her own nation to adore.
Aphra Behn (Oroonoko)
SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE HAVE SUCCESSFUL HABITS Unsuccessful People Don’t!
Jack Canfield (The Power of Focus: How to Hit Your Business, Personal and Financial Targets with Confidence and Certainty)
The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.” -- John Maxwell
Saeed Sikiru (John C. Maxwell's Quotes: 450 Inspirational and Motivational Quotes by John C. Maxwell)
Many a person over the years has tried- both successfully and unsuccessfully, to get rid of their inner demons. Those who are successful are deemed artists, those who are not are call dreamers at best and lunatics at worse. But where exactly resides that line on which two worlds collide? Does somebody know? Is somebody fit to tell? Who's to say that those deemed lunatics are not just successes on the making? Who says that those who claim to be just a tad bit crazy are not just as crazy as those that had completely lost it? Maybe, and bear with me here…everyone is as crazy as the one before them and the next one could ever possibly be. Maybe at the end- it's just that some have mastered creating a façade of calmness and collection while others don't bother going through all that trouble anymore, if they ever did. Perhaps we all have demons…it's just that some people have demons far more toxic and difficult to ignore than others.
Eiry Nieves
In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb. The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.
Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings)
It is not the dead rather the ones who lives through war have seen the dreadful end of the war, you might have been victorious, unwounded but deep within you, you carry the mark of the war, you carry the memories of war, the time you have spend with your comrades, the times when you had to dug in to foxholes to avoid shelling, the times when you hate to see your comrade down on the ground, feeling of despair, atrocities of the war, missing families, home. They live through hell and often the most wounded, they live with the guilt, despair, of being in the war, they may be happy but deep down they are a different person. Not everyone is a hero. You live with the moments, time when you were unsuccessful, when your actions would have helped your comrades, when your actions get your comrades killed, you live with regret, joyous in the victory can never help you forget the time you have spent. You are victorious for the people you have lost, the decisions you have made, the courage you have shown but being victorious in the war has a price to pay, irrevocable. You can't take a memory back from a person, even if you lose your memory your imagination haunts you as deep down your sub conscious mind you know who you are, who you were. Close you eyes and you can very well see your past, you cant change your past, time you have spent, you live through all and hence you are a hero not for the glorious war for the times you have faced. Decoration with medals is not going to give your life back. the more you know, more experiences doesn't make it easy rather make its worse. Arms and ammunition kills you once and free you from the misery but the experiences of war kills you everyday, makes you cherish the times everyday through the life. You may forgot that you cant walk anymore, you may forget you cant use your right hand, you may forgot the scars on your face but you can never forgot war. Life without war is never easy and only the ones how survived through it can understand. Soldiers are taught to fight but the actual combat starts after war which you are not even trained for. You rely on your weapon, leaders, comrades, god, luck in the war but here you rely on your self to beat the horrors,they have seen hell, heaven, they have felt the mixed emotions of hope, despair, courage, victory, defeat, scared.
Pushpa Rana (Just the Way I Feel)
Self-education is a lifetime affair. In life, as in science, there are unsuccessful experiments. Difficult personal and professional experiences are not for naught. Every experience contains a lesson. If we do not achieve the results we want and stop searching out solutions, it is not the experiment that is unsuccessful, but the person.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
I believe there will be odd times in everyones life but remember if an odd number is multiplied with an even number then the result turns out to be even so dont give up because of some odd times in your life. Fight against it remember a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful person lies in this phase. Tackle it and come up with heights.
Biswash Ghalay
think about the word ‘success’. I think about how often people use it about me. About how my time with that word is running out because the goalposts are changing. If I don’t get married and don’t have children then soon I will be seen as less successful. Even if my new book sells ten million copies, my lack of a man loving me, of that man spunking into my womb and growing a person, will deem me unsuccessful. ‘Because it came at a cost, didn’t it?’ they will say. And don’t pretend for a moment that they won’t say it. ‘I guess true success,’ I start to say, nervous I’ve got the answer wrong. ‘True success is living the life you want to live and not caring what other people think.
Holly Bourne (How Do You Like Me Now?)
But suppose you’re still failing, struggling unsuccessfully to find your voice? You should ask yourself, am I the only person in the world who thinks what I’m doing is important? If yes, well, you’re in trouble. You need two people to think your work is good—yourself and somebody else (not your mother). Once you have a following, no matter how limited, your career can be born, and if you make enough noise, those doors will begin to open, and then, and only then, can you soar to lunatic superiority.
John Waters (Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder)
How do you stay motivated?” The answer? I create new reasons to keep showing up. The unsuccessful unceasingly suggest, “If I had what [that person] had, I would retire.” But I don't believe this claim for a second. First of all, they don't know if that's true, since they can't tell how they'd respond to success.
Grant Cardone (The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure)
Our present conscious self and our shadow must learn how to coexist. The first step to attaining personal transcendence commences when the conscious mind and the unconscious mind square off and battle for preeminence. A person who achieves self-realization understands the interworking of both their conscious mind and the unconscious mind and integrates their unique dichotomy into their sense of a self. A person who suffers from a personality disorders or neuroses failed to confront their shadow or unsuccessfully integrated the conflicting motives of the conscious mind and the unconscious mind into a central and fully integrated persona.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
As I said before, I took to miniature painting without a completely whole heart, on the advice of my elders and betters. Generally speaking, I do not think that one should ever take another person's advice in the things of life that really matter, but follow the dictates of the still small something in one's innermost self. But 'they' advised, and I bowed to the advice; and in this particular instance it was a good thing I did, because the advice turned out to be so resoundingly wrong that it turned me into another direction altogether. If I had gone on working in oils I might very well have been a dedicated but unsuccessful painter to this day.
Rosemary Sutcliff (Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection)
Page 54 - 55 "I must tell the truth, and the unpalatable truth is that everyone who comes out of occultic involvements will undergo demonic torment for various periods of time. Jesus illustrated this very well in His parables: quote Matthew 12: 43-45 Clearly when Demons are cast out of a person, they will try to get back in, and if they are unsuccessful, they will go and get seven other stronger than themselves to try to get back in, but Jesus also said: quote Matthew 12:29
Rebecca Julia Brown (Prepare for War)
Correcting Another Believer 15“If another believer* sins against you,* go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.
Hendrickson Bibles (Everyday Matters Bible for Women: Practical Encouragement to Make Every Day Matter)
Gut Feel Versus Structure Many leaders, especially those who run smaller organizations, believe that they have the natural skills they need to choose good people without any real process. They look back at their careers and remember the good employees they’ve hired and give themselves credit for having recognized those people’s potential. However, they seem to block out the memories of the unsuccessful hires they’ve made, or they justify those mistakes based on the hidden behavioral deficiencies in the people they later had to fire. Whatever the case, they persist in the belief that they know a good person when they see one and that they can go about the hiring process without much structure.
Patrick Lencioni (The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business)
Ezra asked me to bring you this,' I said and handed him the jar. 'He said you would know what it was.' He took the jar and looked at it. Then he threw it at me. It struck me on the chest or the shoulder and rolled down the stairs. 'You son of a bitch,' he said. 'You bastard.' 'Ezra said you might need it,' I said. He countered that by throwing a milk bottle. 'You are sure you don't need it?' I asked. He threw another milk bottle. I retreated and he hit me with yet another milk bottle in the back. Then he shut the door. I picked up the jar which was only slightly cracked and put it in my pocket. 'He did not seem to want the gift of Monsieur Pound," I said to the concierge. 'Perhaps he will be tranquil now,' she said. 'Perhaps he has some of his own,' I said. 'Poor Monsieur Dunning,' she said. The lovers of poetry that Ezra organized rallied to Dunning's aid again eventually. My own intervention and that of the concierge had been unsuccessful. The jar of alleged opium which had been cracked I stored wrapped in waxed paper and carefully tied in one of an old pair of riding boots. When Evan Shipman and I were removing my personal effects from that apartment some years later the boots were still there but the jar was gone. I do not know why Dunning threw the milk bottles at me unless he remembered my lack of credulity the night of his first dying, or whether it was only an innate dislike of my personality. But I remember the happiness that the phrase 'Monsieur Dunning est monté sur le toit et refuse catégoriquement de descendre' gave to Evan Shipman. He believed there was something symbolic about it. I would not know. Perhaps Dunning took me for an agent of evil or of the police. I only know that Ezra tried to be kind to Dunning as he was kind to so many people and I always hoped Dunning was as fine a poet as Ezra believed him to be. For a poet he threw a very accurate milk bottle. But Ezra, who was a very good poet, played a good game of tennis too. Evan Shipman, who was a very fine poet and who truly did not care if his poems were ever published, felt that it should remain a mystery. 'We need more true mystery in our lives, Hem,' he once said to me. 'The completely unambitious writer and the really good unpublished poem are the things we lack most at this time. There is, of course, the problem of sustenance.
Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
Only people who have a world-historical perspective can change history. The average person has only a domestic, ahistorical perspective. Look at social media. It’s full of people without a clue what’s going on. Immense historical forces have been unleashed all around them, and all they care about is posting their brain-dead, vacuous observations and their self-pitying, whining woe-is-me statements about how shitty their lives are and how no one understands them. As well as countless memes and selfies, of course. You just have to love those lolcats on skateboards, right, hoomans? They are forever trapped in their parochial little world of trivia. Why are our books so unsuccessful? It’s because they announce, with the volume of Stentor at Troy, a world-historic agenda, but we are surrounded by pygmies who stare at us like cows in line at the abattoir.
Joe Dixon (The Mandarin Effect: The Crisis of Meaning)
Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain; a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs--the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free. In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb. The Deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do. He invented hell, and proclaimed it.
Mark Twain (Letters from the Earth)
What Depression Means To Me. It’s been said that humanity exists in what is called the circle of life, a continuum of time that is characterised by the give and take of a phenomenon that never ceases to exist. However, I choose to liken our experience to a line. A tightrope, if you will. Humans tread this fine strand, always one misstep away from tumbling into the darkness. This darkness indeed is death, but not merely death of the body. It is death of spirit. Death of hope. Death of heart. Death of wishing to escape the temporariness of time. Whether a person walks alone or alongside another, they are unsuccessful in their attempts to be more than what they are. We are all decay. We are all chaotic. We are all hopelessly flawed. We are all incurably human. And we, all of us, have monstrous hearts. Some choose to numb their realities with medication or seclusion. We call these people depressed. But what is depression if not an extension of human fatality? What is depression if not a painful awareness of the imminent abyss? What is depression if not a mode of self-preservation? Nothing on the tightrope can be explained, much less wholly defined. But every indefinable thing has a beginning, and the beginning of understanding depression is simply this: You’re never as alone as you think you are.
Whitney Taylor
It is one of the great beauties of our system, that a working-man may raise himself into the power and position of a master by his own exertions and behaviour; that, in fact, every one who rules himself to decency and sobriety of conduct, and attention to his duties, comes over to our ranks; it may not be always as a master, but as an over-looker, a cashier, a book-keeper, a clerk, one on the side of authority and order.' 'You consider all who are unsuccessful in raising themselves in the world, from whatever cause, as your enemies, then, if I under-stand you rightly,' said Margaret' in a clear, cold voice. 'As their own enemies, certainly,' said he, quickly, not a little piqued by the haughty disapproval her form of expression and tone of speaking implied. But, in a moment, his straightforward honesty made him feel that his words were but a poor and quibbling answer to what she had said; and, be she as scornful as she liked, it was a duty he owed to himself to explain, as truly as he could, what he did mean. Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from his meaning. He could best have illustrated what he wanted to say by telling them something of his own life; but was it not too personal a subject to speak about to strangers? Still, it was the simple straightforward way of explaining his meaning; so, putting aside the touch of shyness that brought a momentary flush of colour into his dark cheek, he said: 'I am not speaking without book. Sixteen years ago, my father died under very miserable circumstances. I was taken from school, and had to become a man (as well as I could) in a few days. I had such a mother as few are blest with; a woman of strong power, and firm resolve. We went into a small country town, where living was cheaper than in Milton, and where I got employment in a draper's shop (a capital place, by the way, for obtaining a knowledge of goods). Week by week our income came to fifteen shillings, out of which three people had to be kept. My mother managed so that I put by three out of these fifteen shillings regularly. This made the beginning; this taught me self-denial. Now that I am able to afford my mother such comforts as her age, rather than her own wish, requires, I thank her silently on each occasion for the early training she gave me. Now when I feel that in my own case it is no good luck, nor merit, nor talent,—but simply the habits of life which taught me to despise indulgences not thoroughly earned,—indeed, never to think twice about them,—I believe that this suffering, which Miss Hale says is impressed on the countenances of the people of Milton, is but the natural punishment of dishonestly-enjoyed pleasure, at some former period of their lives. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their poorness of character.
Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)
He tried to answer the question of why the Italians have produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages, but have still never become a major world power. Why are they the planet’s masters of verbal diplomacy, but still so inept at home government? Why are they so individually valiant, yet so collectively unsuccessful as an army? How can they be such shrewd merchants on the personal level, yet such inefficient capitalists as a nation? His answers to these questions are more complex than I can fairly encapsulate here, but have much to do with a sad Italian history of corruption by local leaders and exploitation by foreign dominators, all of which has generally led Italians to draw the seemingly accurate conclusion that nobody and nothing in this world can be trusted. Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and this makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent “opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors…” In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5   In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality.  We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc.  These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so.  The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern.  Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality:   While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6
Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
Predictable but Contingent: The First ‘Political’ Killing at Karachi University On 25 February 1981, a group of left-wing students from the NSF and PSF was gathered at the Arts Faculty lobby of KU for a demonstration in downtown Karachi when they heard that a military jeep was parked in front of the Administration building. An army major had come to help his daughter get admitted to the university and though he was there for personal reasons, the students were enraged—this was Zia’s Pakistan, a country under military rule, where the left was living its twilight but remained a force to be reckoned with on the campuses, particularly in Karachi. As the organiser of the demonstration, Akram Qaim Khani, recalls, ‘it was a surprise. It was a challenge to us. I was a student leader and the army was in my university…’. At Khani’s instigation, the fifty-odd crowd set off for the Administration building, collected petrol from parked cars, filled a Coca-Cola bottle with it and tried to set fire to the jeep. Khani claims that he saved the driver (‘he ran away, anyway…’), so no one was hurt in the incident, but while the students—unsuccessfully—tried to set the jeep on fire, a group of Thunder Squad militants arrived on the scene and assaulted the agitators. Khani (who contracted polio in his childhood and thus suffered from limited mobility) had been spared from physical assault in the past (‘even the big badmash thought “we cannot touch Akram, otherwise his friends will kill us’”), but this time he was roughed up by Thunder Squad badmashs Farooq and Zarar Khan, and he was eventually captured, detained, and delivered to the army, which arrested him.
Laurent Gayer (Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City)
A drunken party girl and her equally drunken escort got onto the elevator at that moment. The girl spotted Drake and lurched toward him, an inviting smile on her face as she thrust her barely concealed breasts at him. “Hello, handsome. Would you hold me against you if I told you it was beautiful?” I pushed myself between her and Drake. “He’s very handsome, isn’t he? And verytaken.” “Fat bitch,” she snapped, sulking for a moment until she spotted Pál. Her companion slouched against the wall of the elevator, too far gone to care, I guess. The door opened at our floor and we exited, leaving the drunken woman to pout as Pál avoided her grasp. I stopped just outside the door, pulled on Drake’s fire, and set alight a ring at her feet. She shrieked and flapped her arms wildly as the doors started to close. I drew a quick ward on them, and before the outer doors blocked my way, mentally stamped out the fire. I turned to find Drake watching me with crossed arms and a cocked eyebrow. “What?” I asked, trying unsuccessfully to bat my eyelashes at him. “You locked them in there with fire?” “There was a fire extinguisher,” I said. “Of course, she’s probably too drunk to notice it or know how to use it, but that’s hardly my problem.” Drake continued to give me the Eyebrow of Much Displeasure. “There were sprinklers as well. They’re sure to go off at some point…oh, for heaven’s sake, Drake! What sort of person do you take me for? I put out the fire just before the doors closed, OK? I just wanted to scare her a little. I may be a demon lord, but I’m not ademon lord! I wouldn’t barbecue a person just because she called me fat.” “Hey, Ash, you know that you’re getting fa—” “You are not a person,” I told Jim. “If you don’t want me to singe off a few whiskers, you’ll pipe down.” “Yeesh!
Katie MacAlister (Holy Smokes (Aisling Grey, #4))
There’s no efficient way to kill yourself with a dressmaker’s pin (I wouldn’t call contracting gangrene an efficient way to kill yourself) – I puzzled over it for a long time, seeing as they’d left the pins there, but it’s just not possible. Useful for picking locks though. I so loved the burglary lessons we got when we were training. Didn’t so much enjoy the bleak aftermath of my unsuccessful attempt to put them to use – very good at picking locks but not so good at getting out of the building. Our prison cells are only hotel bedrooms, but we are guarded like royalty. And also, there are dogs. After that episode with the pins, they had a good go at making sure I wouldn’t be able to walk if I did manage to get out – don’t know where you pick up the skills for disabling a person without actually breaking her legs, Nazi School of Assault and Battery? Like everything else it wasn’t permanent damage, nothing left this week but the bruises, and they check me carefully now for stray bits of metal. I got caught yesterday trying to hide a pen nib in my hair (I didn’t have a plan for it, but you never know). Oh – often I forget I am not writing this for myself, and then it’s too late to scratch it out. The evil Engel always snatches everything away from me and raises an alarm if she sees me trying to retract anything. Yesterday I tried ripping off the bottom of the page and eating it, but she got to it first. (It was when I realised I had thoughtlessly mentioned the factory at Swinley. It is refreshing sometimes to fight with her. She has the advantage of freedom, but I am a lot more imaginative. Also I am willing to use my teeth which she is squeamish about.) Where was I? Hauptsturmführer von Linden has taken away everything I wrote yesterday. It is your own fault, you cold and soulless Jerry bastard, if I repeat myself.
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
You never asked. How would I like you to kill it? You are a captain in the Red Army, for goodness’ sake. What do they teach you there?” “How to kill human beings. Not mice.” She barely touched her food. “Well, throw a grenade at it. Use your rifle. I don’t know. But do something.” Alexander shook his head. “You went out into the streets of Leningrad while the Germans were throwing five-hundred-kilo bombs that blew arms and legs off the women standing ahead of you in line, you stood fearless in front of cannibals, you jumped off a moving train to go and find your brother, but you are afraid of mice?” “Now you got it,” Tatiana said defiantly. “It doesn’t make sense,” Alexander said. “If a person is fearless in the big things—” “You’re wrong. Again. Are you done with your questions? Anything else you want to ask? Or add?” “Just one thing.” Alexander kept his face serious. “It looks like,” he said slowly, his voice calm, “we’ve found three uses for that too-high potato countertop I built yesterday.” And he burst out laughing. “Go ahead, laugh,” Tatiana said. “Go ahead. I’m here for your amusement.” Her eyes twinkled. Putting his own plate on the bench, Alexander took the plate out of her hands and brought her to him to stand between his legs. Reluctantly she came. “Tania, do you have any idea how funny you are?” He kissed her chest, looking up at her. “I adore you.” “If you really adored me,” she said, trying to twist herself out of his arms, unsuccessfully, “you wouldn’t be sitting here idly flirting when you could be militarizing that cabin.” Alexander stood up. “Just to point out,” he said, “it’s not called flirting once you’ve made love to the girl.” After Alexander went inside, a smiling Tatiana sat on the bench and finished her food. In a few minutes he emerged from the cabin holding his rifle in one hand, his pistol in the other, and a bayonet attachment between his teeth. The dead mouse was swinging at the end of the bayonet. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “How did I do?” Tatiana failed to keep a straight face. “All right, all right,” she said, chortling. “You didn’t have to bring out the spoils of war.” “Ah, but I know you wouldn’t believe in a dead mouse unless you saw it with your own eyes.” “Will you stop quoting me back to me? Shura, you tell me, I will believe it,” said Tatiana. “Now, go on, get out of here with that thing.” “One last question.” “Oh, no,” said Tatiana, covering her face, trying not to laugh. “Do you think this dead mouse is worth the price of a…killed mouse?” “Will you just go?” Tatiana heard his boisterous laughter all the way to the woods and back.
Paullina Simons (The Bronze Horseman (The Bronze Horseman, #1))
The Midnight Game The "Midnight Game" is an old pagan ritual, used mainly as punishment for those who have broken the laws of the pagan religion in question.  While it was mainly used as a scare tactic to not disobey the gods, there is still a very existent chance of death to those who play the Midnight Game.  There is an even higher chance of permanent mental scarring. It is highly recommended that you DO NOT PLAY THE MIDNIGHT GAME.   However, for those few thrill seekers searching for a rush, or for those delving into obscure occult rituals, these are simple instructions on how to play. Do so at your own risk...   WARNING: I have played this game. People have died. Do not play this game. He will always be watching.   Instructions   PREREQUISITES:   It must be exactly 12:00 AM when you begin performing the ritual. Otherwise, it will not work.   MATERIALS:   You will need a candle, a piece of paper, a writing implement, matches or a lighter, salt, a wooden door, and at least one drop of your own blood. If you are playing with multiple people, they will need their own of the aforementioned materials and they will have to perform the steps below accordingly.   STEP 1:   Write your full name (first, middle, and last)on the piece of paper. Put at least one drop of blood on the paper. Allow it to soak into the paper.   STEP 2:   Turn off all of the lights in the place you are doing this. Go to your wooden door, and place the paper with your name on it in front of the door. Now, take out the candle and light it. Place it on top of the paper.   STEP 3:   Knock on the door twenty-two times. The hour must be 12:00 AM upon the final knock. Then, open the door, blow out the candle, and close the door. You have just allowed the "Midnight Man" to enter your house.   STEP 4:   Immediately relite your candle.   This is where the game begins. You must now lurk around your now completely dark house, with the lit candle in your hand. Your goal is to avoid the Midnight Man at all costs, until 3:33 AM. Should your candle ever go out, that means the Midnight Man is near you. You must relight your candle in the next ten seconds.   If you are not successful in doing this, you must then immediately surround yourself with a circle of salt. If you are unsuccessful in both of your actions, the Midnight Man will create a hallucination of your greatest fear, and rip out your organs one by one. You will feel it, but you will be unable to react.   If you are successful in creating the circle of salt, you must remain in there until 3:33 AM.   If you are successful in relighting your candle, you may proceed with the game. You must continue to 3:33 AM, without being attacked by the Midnight Man, or being trapped inside the circle of salt, to win the Midnight Game. The Midnight Man will leave your house at 3:33 AM, and you will be safe to proceed with your morning.   ADDITION:   Indications that you are near the Midnight Man will include sudden drop in temperature, seeing a pure black, humanoid figure through the darkness, and hearing very soft whispering coming from an indiscernible source. If you experience any of these, it is advised that you leave the area to avoid the Midnight Man.   DO NOT turn any of the lights on during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT use a flashlight during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT go to sleep during the Midnight Game.   DO NOT attempt to use another person's blood on your name.   DO NOT use a lighter as a substitute for a candle. It will not work.   AND DEFINITELY DO NOT attempt to provoke the Midnight Man in ANY WAY.   Even when the game is over, he will always be watching
Adam L. (Creepypasta: Expanded Edition)
RESENTMENT - “Resentment is blockade No. 1 to spiritual power.” -“Resentment is a poisonous emotion that eats away at a person's peace of mind and mental well-being. It also affects their ability to respond positively to others.” -“Resentment says volumes about the person who resents, but very little about the persons or actions the resentment is directed at.” -“When you embrace resentment, you empower others to affect your emotional response.” -“People must be given the same rights you have, to think, speak and act as they wish. No amount of resentment can or will change others opinions about you/ towards you.” - Sekou Obadias – Author of “SOGANUTU” – A book of life’s Maxims SUCCESS -“God’s plan for man’s success is built on four pillars: (1) faith/belief. (2) initiative/effort. (3) obedience/discipline to the laws of the universe. (4) benevolence- what you do to others and for others. -“Success is 80% psychology and 20% effort. Once the mind is programme to succeed, and you initiate the effort, the universe will provide the tools to achieve success.” -“People inability to succeed, is not necessarily attributed to their lack of opportunity, desire or effort.“ -“The absolute reason why people are unsuccessful is their lack of knowledge of how their minds work. As a result, they fail to take the actions necessary to achieve their desired objective.” -“Success is not final, neither is failure fatal….it is the courage to continue that counts.” -“Success is all about consistency with the fundamentals.” -“Whatever man has done, man can do…”modeling is the key to duplicating any form of human excellence.” If you want what others have, just know what they know, and do what they do.” -“If there is no visual plan or path to success for you to model, then it is your responsibility to create a path for others to follow.“ - Sekou Obadias – Author of “SOGANUTU” – A book of life’s Maxims TEMPERANCE -“A balance life requires one to be temperate in all things - abstaining from that which is bad for you and be moderate with that which is good for you.” - Sekou Obadias – Author of “SOGANUTU” – A book of life’s Maxims
Sekou Obadias
Does an arbitrary human convention, a mere custom, decree that man must guide his actions by a set of principles—or is there a fact of reality that demands it? Is ethics the province of whims: of personal emotions, social edicts and mystic revelations—or is it the province of reason? Is ethics a subjective luxury—or an objective necessity? In the sorry record of the history of mankind’s ethics—with a few rare, and unsuccessful, exceptions—moralists have regarded ethics as the province of whims, that is: of the irrational. Some of them did so explicitly, by intention—others implicitly, by default. A “whim” is a desire experienced by a person who does not know and does not care to discover its cause. No philosopher has given a rational, objectively demonstrable, scientific answer to the question of why man needs a code of values. So long as that question remained unanswered, no rational, scientific, objective code of ethics could be discovered or defined. The greatest of all philosophers, Aristotle, did not regard ethics as an exact science; he based his ethical system on observations of what the noble and wise men of his time chose to do, leaving unanswered the questions of: why they chose to do it and why he evaluated them as noble and wise. Most philosophers took the existence of ethics for granted, as the given, as a historical fact, and were not concerned with discovering its metaphysical cause or objective validation. Many of them attempted to break the traditional monopoly of mysticism in the field of ethics and, allegedly, to define a rational, scientific, nonreligious morality. But their attempts consisted of trying to justify them on social grounds, merely substituting society for God. The avowed mystics held the arbitrary, unaccountable “will of God” as the standard of the good and as the validation of their ethics. The neomystics replaced it with “the good of society,” thus collapsing into the circularity of a definition such as “the standard of the good is that which is good for society.” This meant, in logic—and, today, in worldwide practice—that “society” stands above any principles of ethics, since it is the source, standard and criterion of ethics, since “the good” is whatever it wills, whatever it happens to assert as its own welfare and pleasure. This meant that “society” may do anything it pleases, since “the good” is whatever it chooses to do because it chooses to do it. And—since there is no such entity as “society,” since society is only a number of individual men—this meant that some men (the majority or any gang that claims to be its spokesman) are ethically entitled to pursue any whims (or any atrocities) they desire to pursue, while other men are ethically obliged to spend their lives in the service of that gang’s desires. This could hardly be called rational, yet most philosophers have now decided to declare that reason has failed, that ethics is outside the power of reason, that no rational ethics can ever be defined, and that in the field of ethics—in the choice of his values, of his actions, of his pursuits, of his life’s goals—man must be guided by something other than reason. By what? Faith—instinct—intuition—revelation—feeling—taste—urge—wish—whim Today, as in the past, most philosophers agree that the ultimate standard of ethics is whim (they call it “arbitrary postulate” or “subjective choice” or “emotional commitment”)—and the battle is only over the question or whose whim: one’s own or society’s or the dictator’s or God’s. Whatever else they may disagree about, today’s moralists agree that ethics is a subjective issue and that the three things barred from its field are: reason—mind—reality. If you wonder why the world is now collapsing to a lower and ever lower rung of hell, this is the reason. If you want to save civilization, it is this premise of modern ethics—and of all ethical
Anonymous
The formal operational thinker has the ability to consider many different solutions to a problem before acting. This greatly increases efficiency, because the individual can avoid potentially unsuccessful attempts at solving a problem. The formal operational person considers past experiences, present demands, and future consequences in attempting to maximize the success of his or her adaptation to the world.
Neil J. Salkind (Theories of Human Development)
The expatriate mentality is a tough thing to explain easily. Any affluent or even middle-class American who renounces the good life of sushi delivery and 50-channel cable television to relocate permanently to some third-world hole usually has to be motivated by a highly destructive personality defect. Either that, or something about home creates psychological demons that in turn create the urge for radical escape. I’d moved overseas straight out of college and been a classic expatriate ever since. I had all the symptoms: periodic unsuccessful attempts to repatriate, a tendency to try to make grandiose foreign adventures compensate for a total inability to accumulate money; bad teeth; unhealthy personal relationships, etc. I’d been aware for years that my passion for uprooting and completely changing my lifestyle and even my career was like a drug addiction – not only did I get off on it, but I needed to do it fairly regularly just to keep from getting the shakes.
Matt Taibbi (The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia)
15“If another believer* sins against you,* go privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it, you have won that person back. 16But if you are unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again, so that everything you say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses. 17If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Then if he or she won’t accept the church’s decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector.
Stephen Arterburn (The Life Recovery Bible NLT)
You can be an unhappy person, but you must never be a hopeless person! You can be an unsuccessful person or a defeated or an abandoned unlucky person, but you must never be a hopeless person! Being hopeless is the worst of the worst, it is the ultimate worst!
Mehmet Murat ildan
Since 1945 Turkey has, of course, acquired far more importance for the US as a strategic ally, first in the Cold War and now the War on Terror. In the last twenty years, increasing pressure from the Armenian community, today much more salient than in the 1920s, and the emergence of an Armenian scholarship that has pioneered modern study of the exterminations of 1915-16 in the West, have made repression of the question more difficult. After previously unsuccessful attempts to get resolutions on it through Congress, in 2000 the House International Relations Committee voted for a bipartisan resolution condemning the Armenian genocide, while carefully exempting the Turkish Republic from any responsibility for it. Ankara’s response was to threaten withdrawal of American military facilities in Turkey, trade reprisals, and to talk of a risk of violence against Americans in Turkey – the State Department even had to issue a travel advisory – if the resolution were passed by Congress. Characteristically, Clinton intervened in person to prevent the resolution getting to the floor. In Ankara, Ecevit exulted that it was a demonstration of Turkish power.
Perry Anderson
I believe failure does not exist once you are conscious. Because whenever you are unsuccessful, you still get the chance to do it again or do something else to be successful in life. Once you have a chance, you can't be a failure. The only failure is the person inside the grave with no chance to come back to life.
Anthony Kwadwo Boakye
Their feelings about themselves are the opposite of the serene image they present – they generally feel insecure, inadequate, dull, unsuccessful, vulnerable and anxious.’ The report also discovered that they found it difficult to develop strong personal relationships. What
Sam Harrington-Lowe (Alcoholism: The Family Guide (Need2Know Books Book 24))
Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse.” I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony,” standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns’n’Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we’re schizophrenic in here!
Alison Miller (Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse)
The men in her life were clean-cut, well-bred, reliable, unpretentious and good company. “Diana is an Uptown girl who has never gone in for downtown men,” observes Rory Scott. If they wore a uniform or had been cast aside by Sarah so much the better. She felt rather sorry for Sarah’s rejects and often tried, unsuccessfully, to be asked out by them. So she did washing for William van Straubenzee, one of Sarah’s old boyfriends, and ironed the shirts of Rory Scott, who had then starred in a television documentary about Trooping the Colour, and Diana regularly stayed for weekends at his parents’ farm near Petworth, West Sussex. She continued caring for his wardrobe during her royal romance, on one occasion delivering a pile of freshly laundered shirts to the back entrance of St. James’s Palace, where Rory was on duty, in order to avoid the press. James Boughey was another military man who took her out to restaurants and the theatre and Diana visited Simon Berry and Adam Russell at their rented house on the Blenheim estate when they were undergraduates at Oxford. There were lots of boyfriends but none became lovers. The sense of destiny which Diana had felt from an early age shaped, albeit unconsciously, her relationships with the opposite sex. She says: “I knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.” As Carolyn observes: “I’m not a terrible spiritual person but I do believe that she was meant to do what she is doing and she certainly believes that. She was surrounded by this golden aura which stopped men going any further, whether they would have liked to or not, it never happened. She was protected somehow by a perfect light.” It is a quality noted by her old boyfriends. Rory Scott says roguishly: “She was very sexually attractive and the relationship was not a platonic one as far as I was concerned but it remained that way. She was always a little aloof, you always felt that there was a lot you would never know about her.” In the summer of 1979 another boyfriend, Adam Russell, completed his language degree at Oxford and decided to spend a year travelling. He left unspoken the fact that he hoped the friendship between himself and Diana could be renewed and developed upon his return. When he arrived home a year later it was too late. A friend told him: “You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Given this lack of evidence, why has the meshing hypothesis proved so tenacious? The authors of the paper suspect that learning style theories ‘may reflect the fact that people are concerned that they, and their children, be seen and treated by educators as unique individuals’ (2008: 107). Moreover, learning styles offer unsuccessful learners (and their parents) a stick to beat their teachers with: ‘If a person or a person’s child is not succeeding or excelling in school, it may be more comfortable for the person to think that the educational system … is responsible [and] that the fault lies with instruction being inadequately tailored to one’s learning style’ (ibid.). Learning styles, in other words, are a convenient untruth.
Scott Thornbury (Big Questions in ELT)
A person who does not understand biblical soteriology cannot help but have a warped sense of reality and an unsuccessful Christian life.
Vincent Cheung (On Good and Evil)
and said in effect: “Perish—the sooner the better.” So it was that Serno-Solovevich, for example, became a founder of the revolutionary secret society Zemlia i Volia (Land and Liberty), predecessor of the Narodnaia Volia (People’s Will) organization, whose leaders finally carried out the assassination of Alexander. But the change of mind was most clearly reflected in the proclamation written by a student, Karakozov, to explain his unsuccessful attempt on the tsar’s life in 1866. Russian history, it said, shows that the person really responsible for all the people’s sufferings is the tsar himself: “It is the tsars who through the centuries have gradually built up the organization of the state, and the army; it is they who have handed out the land to the nobles. Think carefully about it, brothers, and you will see that the tsar is the first of the nobles. He never holds out his hand to the peasant because he himself is the people’s worst enemy.
Robert C. Tucker (Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality, 1879-1929)
The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.
The Washington Post (The Mueller Report)
In considering the full scope of the conduct we investigated, the President’s actions can be divided into two distinct phases reflecting a possible shift in the President’s motives. In the first phase, before the President fired Comey, the President had been assured that the FBI had not opened an investigation of him personally. The President deemed it critically important to make public that he was not under investigation, and he included that information in his termination letter to Comey after other efforts to have that information disclosed were unsuccessful.
The Washington Post (The Mueller Report)
[Ronan] tried unsuccessfully to imagine the person that could beat Declan up. The only person who had ever succeeded in beating up a Lynch brother had been another Lynch brother.
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
Out of that belief, thus instilled, then comes action—the bidding up of values, whether in land, securities, or, as recently, art. The upward movement confirms the commitment to personal and group wisdom. And so on to the moment of mass disillusion and the crash. This last, it will now be sufficiently evident, never comes gently. It is always accompanied by a desperate and largely unsuccessful effort to get out. Inherent
John Kenneth Galbraith (A Short History of Financial Euphoria (Business))
Successful people make decisions quickly (as soon as all the facts are available) and firmly. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly, and they change them often.
Napoleon Hill (Napoleon Hill's Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement)
Humankind devotes much of its collective energy to managing personal and institutional anxiety and dealing with unsuccessful efforts of its civilians to cope with the tides of shifting social and economic conditions. Every city corridor houses downtrodden citizens whom have given up on life, the dopers, smoke hounds, crack heads, and unrepentant drunkards whom spend their days pushing shopping carts and their nights sleeping in gutters. In marked contrast to these filthy and wretched souls whom inhabit the skid row of every city’s streets, all animals display an admirable state of hygiene and a zest for life. Except for poor critters sentenced to live confined in a zoo and domestic animals held captives in deplorable harvesting pens, all animals live a carefree existence that is preferable to living off stress sandwiches of modern humankind.
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
BORN UNDER A THREEPENNY HALFPENNY PLANET, NEVER TO BE WORTH A GROAT. Said of any person remarkably unsuccessful in his attempts or profession. BOTCH.
Francis Grose (The Dictionary of the vulgar Tongue)
Take Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who waged an unsuccessful campaign to regulate the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market. Soon after the Clinton administration asked her to take the reins of the CFTC, a regulatory backwater, she became aware of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, a rapidly expanding and opaque market, which she attempted to regulate. According to a PBS Frontline special: "Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation." Put more directly by New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien, "they ... shut her up and shut her down." Mind you, Born was no dummy. She was the first female president of the Stanford Law Review, the first woman to finish at the top of the class, and an expert in commodities and futures. But because a trio of people who were literally en-titled decided they knew what was best for the market, they dismissed her call for regulation, a dismissal that triggered the financial collapse of 2008. To be fair to Greenspan et al., their resistance was not surprising. According to psychologists Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth, "we [as human beings] are prone to search only for confirming evidence, and ignore disconfirming evidence." In the case of Born, it was the '90s, the markets were doing well, and the country was prospering; it's easy to see why the powerful troika rejected her disconfirming views. Throw in the fact that the disconcerting evidence was coming from a "disconfirming" person (i.e., a woman), and they were even more likely to disregard the data. In the aftermath, Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, said, "If she just would have gotten to know us... maybe it would have gone a different way."12 Born quotes Michael Greenberg, the director of the CFTC under her, as saying, "They say you weren't a team player, but I never saw them issue you a uniform." We like ideas and people that fit into our world-view, but there is tremendous value in finding room for those that don't. According to Paul Carlile and Clayton Christensen, "It is only when an anomaly is identified—an outcome for which a theory can't account that an opportunity to improve theory occurs."13 One of the ways you'll know you are coming up against an anomaly is if you find yourself annoyed, defensive, even dismissive, of a person, or his idea.
Whitney Johnson (Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work)
During the second semester of 1945, at the University of Havana, Fidel Castro studied law and became involved in student politics. It was during a time when student protesters were exceptionally active. Throughout the régime of Geraldo Machado (President of Cuba from 20 May 1925 until 12 August 1933), university students were suppressed by La Porra (the secret police), and later it was not much better when Batista’s forces took over. Things got very physical when student activists and labor leaders were attacked and terrorized by violent, armed, politically motivated gangs. Frequently, even opposing student groups attacked each other. Castro, getting caught up in this gang culture, ran for the position of President of the Federation of University Students (FEU), a group founded by Julio Antonio Mella (the originator of Communism in Cuba). Although he was unsuccessful in this endeavor, he did become active in anti-imperialistic movements and campaigned for Puerto Rican Independence and a democratic government for the Dominican Republic. His involvement in these left-leaning groups grew, and although he did not embrace communism, he did protest the political corruption and violence during the Grau administration. In November of 1946, Castro spoke out against President Grau (7th President of Cuba) during a student speech, the text of which was printed in several newspapers. In 1947 Castro joined Eduardo Chibás’ (a well liked activist & radio personality) new Partido Ortodoxo, which promoted social justice, political freedom and honest government.
Hank Bracker
In 1973 Flora Schreiber wrote SYBIL, a case history of a person with DID. After Schreiber’s death in 1988 there have been several unsuccessful attempts to prove this case was a fraud. Some of these people, enflamed by the success of the book, have falsified and distorted documents in Flora Schreiber’s archives to prove their theories. Furthermore, some did not engage in logical thinking. If the three women in "SYBIL" were clever enough to dupe the whole world, would they would not be clever enough to destroy so-called incriminating documents which Flora Schreiber bequeathed to John Jay College? Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist.
Patrick Suraci
reality TV personality, property mogul and now President of the United States, Donald Trump attempted, unsuccessfully to woo her.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Failure stories are successful only when that unsuccessful person becomes successful.
Anuj Jasani
The writer and polymath George Plimpton noted that successful people have paradoxically had many more failures than people whom most of us would consider to be, well, failures. If this sounds like double-talk or mumbo jumbo, the resolution of the paradox is that successful people (or people who eventually become successful) deal with failures and setbacks very differently from everyone else. The unsuccessful person interprets the failure or setback as a career breaker and concludes, “I’m no good at this.” The successful person sees each setback as an opportunity to gain whatever additional knowledge is necessary to accomplish her goals.
Daniel J. Levitin (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload)
A unsuccessful person is one who stops believing in himself and stops trying to be successful
Anuj Jasani
Why some brilliant people are failures. I’ve been close for many years to a person who qualifies as a genius, has high abstract intelligence, and is Phi Beta Kappa. Despite this very high native intelligence, he is one of the most unsuccessful people I know. He has a very mediocre job (he’s afraid of responsibility). He has never married (lots of marriages end in divorce). He has few friends (people bore him). He’s never invested in property of any kind (he might lose his money). This man uses his great brainpower to prove why things won’t work rather than directing his mental power to searching for ways to succeed.
David J. Schwartz (The Magic of Thinking Big)
You can’t let your lack of (worldly) success turn you into an unsuccessful person
Ram V. Iyer
Just as a warning to other writers, we are plagued with spam ratings which have been reported but remain on accounts. I too have one I have unsuccessful in removing: Fatima Shakeel rated it it was ok Aug 16, 2021. This book was not purchased by the user nor is this person a reviewer. It is advisable not to interact with them.
Caroline Walken
a thought in itself isn’t enough to manifest things or circumstances. It must be fueled with an energy in the form of emotion, such as enthusiasm, excitement, passion, or happiness. For this reason, someone enthusiastic about his or her dream will achieve more than a pessimistic and unmotivated person. Successful people constantly focus on what they want with positive expectation while unsuccessful people focus on what they don’t want or what they lack. The latter are afraid of having a lack of money, talent, time, or any other resources they may need to achieve their goals. As a result, pessimists accomplish far less than they’re capable of achieving.
Thibaut Meurisse (Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1))
Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (1971) now appears to be the playbook for partisans across the political spectrum: in place of reasoned debate, we have an unremitting stream of smears and ad hominem abuse, which when unsuccessful are followed up by attempts to deplatform adversaries or harm them in their personal lives or careers. This is healthy for no-one.
Andrew Lynn (Classic Political Philosophy for the Modern Man (Classics for the Modern Man Book 3))
This intensive two-year campaign by a public health worker in a Peruvian village of 200 families, aimed at persuading housewives to boil drinking water, was largely unsuccessful. Nelida was able to encourage only about 5 percent of the population, eleven families, to adopt the innovation. The diffusion campaign in Los Molinas failed because of the cultural beliefs of the villagers. Local tradition links hot foods with illness. Boiling water makes water less “cold” and hence, appropriate only for the sick. But if a person is not ill, the individual is prohibited by village norms from drinking boiled water. Only individuals who are unintegrated into local networks risk defying community norms on water boiling. An important factor regarding the adoption rate of an innovation is its compatibility with the values, beliefs, and past experiences of individuals in the social system. Nelida and her superiors in the public health agency should have understood the hot-cold belief system, as it is found throughout Peru (and in most nations of Latin America, Africa, and Asia). Here is an example of an indigenous knowledge system that caused the failure of a development program.
Everett M. Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations)
remember learning after entering Wharton in 1963 was that the quality of a decision is not determined by the outcome. The events that transpire afterward make decisions successful or unsuccessful, and those events are often well beyond anticipating. This idea was powerfully reinforced when I read Taleb’s book. He highlights the ability of chance occurrences to reward unwise decisions and penalize good ones. What is a good decision? Let’s say someone decides to build a ski resort in Miami, and three months later a freak blizzard hits south Florida, dumping twelve feet of snow. In its first season, the ski area turns a hefty profit. Does that mean building it was a good decision? No. A good decision is one that a logical, intelligent and informed person would have made under the circumstances as they appeared at the time, before the outcome was known. By that standard, the Miami ski resort looks like folly.
Howard Marks (The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor (Columbia Business School Publishing))
An unsuccessful person feels obliged to praise himself all the time because in order to feel happy, he must compensate for his failure in a virtual way!
Mehmet Murat ildan
She had always told me stories about how poor a country Argentina was, being the reason for her girlfriend, Caterina, to move to Spain, which she said was the 13th richest country on the planet. Perhaps Martina's perception of Spain itself was crooked or surrealistic. She didn't realize that the country might be the 13th richest country in the world, but Spain was seriously broke and the people were desperately impoverished since 2007, the economic crisis had never ended, yet Martina seemed oblivious to all that. In her eyes, Spain was a rich country compared to Argentina. Martina perceived Europe and its various nationalities and countries in a surrealistic way, removed from reality; as if all Europeans were the same and equally trustworthy, just like non-Europeans in Spain, and she could not distinguish between people or groups of people coming from different places, with no reservations. This sounds very liberal, but there was only selfish capitalist interest behind it all and sometimes it showed for a moment or two that money was the main reason for her being in Europe in the first place, under the guise of a cover-up not being so much of a secret from me time to time. As if Spain were a playground for children or criminals, which wasn't too far from reality. But I noticed that she saw different false shadows under the same light casting shade of the same crap; she was confident in her beliefs, but at the same time seemingly questioning herself as to whether she was right or wrong, and if it mattered at all. Nonetheless, she was completely unaware of the dangers and trusted people too easily. She had no fear and appeared like a cool kid from the streets of even more dangerous places. Yet, considering her well-educated nature, and the fact that she could also be quite normal, she saw things differently than a European person, almost like a child from the favelas of Brazil, ready to kill for daily nutrition, making it an interesting paradox to observe her personality and her vibes changing like a kaleidoscope beneath the surface for those looking from the right angle. Martina didn't realize that Italy was Romania vol. 2, or what that meant--how history lives on, how the gypsies who died with the Jews never received a country of their own. I was not acutely aware of the fact that Spain was Romania vol. 3. The prospect of warm weather and easy money had been attracting criminals from all corners of the planet. She seemed to be the typical Libra she actually was, quite consciously quite lost and always trying to find her own balance unsuccessfully as if she was dizzy, never managing to attain the perfect measure, making mistakes and constantly questioning her own results and the actions that led to them. She attempted to conceal her lack of confidence with at times an exaggerated display of confidence. She vacillated between being too shy and too cool, never seeming authentic. I attempted to impart Hegel's philosophy to her, explaining how opposing things can settle into harmony, where the truth is likely to be found in moderation and synthesis, hoping she would find it easier to maintain her inner balance amidst all the bad people and bad vibes coming from all directions.
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
She had always told me stories about how poor a country Argentina was, being the reason for her girlfriend, Caterina, to move to Spain, which she said was the 13th richest country on the planet. Perhaps Martina's perception of Spain itself was crooked or surrealistic. She didn't realize that the country might be the 13th richest country in the world, but Spain was seriously broke and the people were desperately impoverished since 2007, the economic crisis had never ended, yet Martina seemed oblivious to all that. In her eyes, Spain was a rich country compared to Argentina. Martina perceived Europe and its various nationalities and countries in a surrealistic way, removed from reality; as if all Europeans were the same and equally trustworthy, just like non-Europeans in Spain, and she could not distinguish between people or groups of people coming from different places, with no reservations. This sounds very liberal, but there was only selfish capitalist interest behind it all and sometimes it showed for a moment or two that money was the main reason for her being in Europe in the first place, under the guise of a cover-up not being so much of a secret from me time to time. As if Spain were a playground for children or criminals, which wasn't too far from reality. But I noticed that she saw different false shadows under the same light casting shade of the same crap; she was confident in her beliefs, but at the same time seemingly questioning herself as to whether she was right or wrong, and if it mattered at all. Nonetheless, she was completely unaware of the dangers and trusted people too easily. She had no fear and appeared like a cool kid from the streets of even more dangerous places. Yet, considering her well-educated nature, and the fact that she could also be quite normal, she saw things differently than a European person, almost like a child from the favelas of Brazil, ready to kill for daily nutrition, making it an interesting paradox to observe her personality and her vibes changing like a kaleidoscope beneath the surface for those looking from the right angle. Martina didn't realize that Italy was Romania vol. 2, or what that meant--how history lives on, how the gypsies who died with the Jews never received a country of their own. I was not acutely aware of the fact that Spain was Romania vol. 3. The prospect of warm weather and easy money had been attracting criminals from all corners of the planet. She seemed to be the typical Libra she actually was, quite consciously quite lost and always trying to find her own balance unsuccessfully as if she was dizzy, never managing to attain the perfect measure, making mistakes and constantly questioning her own results and the actions that led to them. She attempted to conceal her lack of confidence with at times an exaggerated display of confidence. She vacillated between being too shy and too cool, never seeming authentic. I attempted to impart Herder's philosophy to her, explaining how opposing things can settle into harmony, where the truth is likely to be found in moderation and synthesis, hoping she would find it easier to maintain her inner balance amidst all the bad people and bad vibes coming from all directions.
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
Life, simply for life's sake, is obscene. I'm so grateful that I live in a right-to-die state. "Keep your laws off of my body" definitely refers to more than the abortion issue. How DARE they try to make the decision for someone else? Suicide is liberty. For a terminally ill person, it can mean death with dignity, versus months and even years of suffering. It's not a popular view, for sure, especially regarding mental illness. However, the resulting loss of liberty, privacy and personal rights after an unsuccessful attempt is beyond cruel, in my eyes. Anyone who has spent time in an asylum can tell you that if you weren't 'crazy' going in, you'll lose your mind in there. To be talked down to like a child and patronized as a 'lesser' person takes its toll. I have a feeling that this post may get me into trouble, but I felt as though it had to be said...
Lioness DeWinter
1 an oval or round object laid by a female bird, reptile, fish, or invertebrate, usually containing a developing embryo. The eggs of birds are enclosed in a chalky shell, while those of reptiles are in a leathery membrane. an infertile bird's egg, especially one from a chicken, used for food. a thing resembling a bird's egg in shape: chocolate eggs. 2 [BIOLOGY] the female reproductive cell in animals and plants; an ovum. 3 [ARCHITECTURE] a decorative oval moulding, used alternately with triangular shapes: [as modifier] egg and dart moulding. 4 [with adj.] INFORMAL, DATED a person of a specified kind: the biography portrays him as a thoroughly bad egg. don't put all your eggs in one basket PROVERB don't risk everything on the success of one venture. go suck an egg [as imperative] NORTH AMERICAN INFORMAL used as an expression of anger or scorn. kill the goose that lays the golden eggs destroy a reliable and valuable source of income. [ with allusion to one of Aesop's fables.] lay an egg NORTH AMERICAN INFORMAL be completely unsuccessful. with egg on one's face INFORMAL appearing foolish or ridiculous: don't underestimate this team, or you'll be left with egg on your face. eggless adj. Middle English (superseding earlier ey, from Old English g): from Old Norse. egg2
Angus Stevenson (Oxford Dictionary of English)
Page 54 - 55 "I must tell the truth, and the unpalatable truth is that everyone who comes out of occultic involvements will undergo demonic torment for various periods of time. Jesus illustrated this very well in His parables: '43 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.' Matthew 12: 43-45 Clearly when Demons are cast out of a person, they will try to get back in, and if they are unsuccessful, they will go and get seven other stronger than themselves to try to get back in, but Jesus also said: '29 Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.' Matthew 12:29
Rebecca Julia Brown (Prepare for War)
Why are there individual differences in people?s bodily communication? Which analogies appear to dominate in bodily communication, and in what ways would the metaphorization and metonymization processes operate? In this study, the relationship of bodily communication performance with cognitive and personality variables is investigated. In the experimental setting, the participants are instructed to communicate certain words one by one nonverbally just as in the ?Silent Movie? game. The stability of expectancy ratings, the factor structure of the performance and the frequency of the ways of representations are analyzed. Interrater reliability analysis, third eye analysis and case studies are conducted; the unsuccessful representations are described and finally, structural equation modeling results are presented. The theories and research on personality and cognition, metaphors, metonymies, analogies, bodily representations, mind-reading, pragmatics and relevance are reviewed and after the exposition of the strategies, schemata and scripts employed in the experiments, a model of bodily communication was proposed.
Ulaş Başar Gezgin (Silent Movies, Cognition And Communication: Relationship Of Bodily Communication With Cognitive And Personality Variables)
Though the intensity may differ from person to person, you can be sure that everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control. If you satisfy those drives, you’re in the door. As we saw with my chat with Daryl, you’re not going to logically convince them that they’re safe, secure, or in control. Primal needs are urgent and illogical, so arguing them into a corner is just going to push your counterpart to flee with a counterfeit “Yes.” And being “nice” in the form of feigned sympathy is often equally as unsuccessful. We live in an age that celebrates niceness under various names. We are exhorted to be nice and to respect people’s feelings at all times and in every situation. But nice alone in the context of negotiation can backfire. Nice, employed as a ruse, is disingenuous and manipulative. Who hasn’t received the short end of the stick in dealings with a “nice” salesman who took you for a ride? If you rush in with plastic niceness, your bland smile is going to dredge up all that baggage. Instead of getting inside with logic or feigned smiles, then, we get there by asking for “No.” It’s the word that gives the speaker feelings of safety and control. “No” starts conversations and creates safe havens to get to the final “Yes” of commitment. An early “Yes” is often just a cheap, counterfeit dodge.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It)
An example of making this delineation of responsibility, outside the realm of codependency, is when a person witnesses for Christ and shares the Gospel with an unbeliever. While the Christian is responsible to the Lord, he is not responsible for the unbeliever's response to the gospel. That is between God and the unbeliever. If the Christian who testifies for the Lord without apparent results thinks it's his fault the listener is not converted, he is limiting the sovereignty of God and taking responsibility beyond his capability. Likewise if a spouse or friend assumes responsibility beyond what God has given, he is operating outside his own area of obedience to the Lord. When that happens, he may tend to discontinue obeying God, since he is unsuccessful in accomplishing the responsibility given to others.
Martin Bobgan (12 Steps to Destruction: Codependecy/Recovery Heresies)
AN UNSUCCESSFUL PERSON TRAIN OTHERS WHILE A SUCCESSFUL PERSON TRAIN HIMSELF
P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
They say behind every successful man, there is a woman. But I say, behind every successful person, are unsuccessful years full of pain and hard work.
Mong'are Ludiah
I prefer to remain a skeptic. People frequently misinterpret my opinion. I never said that every rich man is an idiot and every unsuccessful person unlucky, only that in absence of much additional information it is preferable to reserve one’s judgment. It is safer. Ten • LOSER TAKES ALL—ON THE NONLINEARITIES OF LIFE The nonlinear viciousness of life.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets (Incerto Book 1))
A fundamental aspect of flexibility is what psychologists call pathways thinking, and it’s the ability to find or create many workable paths to a given outcome.10 The more flexible you are as a person, the more willing you’ll be to try multiple approaches to getting where you want to go. The more rigid you are, the more dogmatically you’ll try forcing the same approach even when it proves unsuccessful.
Benjamin P. Hardy (The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success)
Is that what got under your skin? That I shut you out, or that it was so easy for Tarquin to get in?' 'What got under my skin,' Rhys said, his breathing a bit uneven, 'is that you smiled at him.' The rest of the world faded to mist as the words sank in. 'You are jealous.' His shook his head, stalking to the little table against the far wall and knocking back a glass of amber liquid. He braced his hands on the table, the powerful muscles of his back quivering beneath his shirt as the shadow of those wings struggled to take form. 'I heard what you told him,' he said. 'That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too.' 'So?' It was the only thing I could think of to say. 'I was jealous- of that. That I'm not... that sort of person. For anyone. The Summer Court has always been neutral; they only showed backbone during those years Under the Mountain. I spared Tarquin's life because I'd heard how he wanted to even out the playing field between High Far and lesser faeries. I've been trying to do that for years. Unsuccessfully, but... I spared him for that alone. And Tarquin, with his neutral court... he will never have to worry about someone walking away because the threat against their life, their children's lives, will always be there. So, yes, I was jealous of him- because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
Just like us, successful people are also given 24 hours each day. The only differences between them and unsuccessful individuals are their winner mindset and self discipline.
Kevin J. Donaldson (10 Secrets of the New Rich: Your Ultimate Motivational Guide to Achieving Personal Transformation, Mastering Entrepreneurship, and Joining the World's New Breed of Millionaires)
rogrammers have “theories” about how software will behave when they change a line of code. Those theories rarely hold up to their first encounter with reality. Unsuccessful programmers could probably wax eloquent about how things should be different. Successful programmers just debug their code. Such a profession would quickly wean a person from idealistic notions about how to make a change. Successful programmers soon learn that it is more profitable to challenge their own thinking than to curse their computers when faced with unexpected results. There is no reason that communities could not formulate policy in a similar way. Two reasons that it is not is because of our still rudimentary understanding of system dynamics and our insistence on placing blame on individuals rather than trying to understand systems.
Ron Davison (The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization)
It may be no coincidence that the world’s richest man is a computer programmer. Programmers have “theories” about how software will behave when they change a line of code. Those theories rarely hold up to their first encounter with reality. Unsuccessful programmers could probably wax eloquent about how things should be different. Successful programmers just debug their code. Such a profession would quickly wean a person from idealistic notions about how to make a change. Successful programmers soon learn that it is more profitable to challenge their own thinking than to curse their computers when faced with unexpected results.
Ron Davison (The Fourth Economy: Inventing Western Civilization)
Finding Three: Boys Are Relational Learners Perhaps the most revealing and promising finding in our study was one that appeared without our seeking it. We had asked both boys and teachers not to discuss, mention, or name individual persons when they recounted an especially effective scholastic experience. And not a single teacher named or even profiled an individual student. By contrast, almost all of the boys named or profiled teachers. In many cases, boys veered away from discussing the nature of the lesson into deeply feeling responses to the impact a specific teacher had made. There was no single quality or even pattern of qualities singled out in the boys’ responses; they appreciated especially attentive and nurturing teachers in equal measure with daunting taskmasters who displayed an impressive command of their subjects. They celebrated teachers who found ways to be genuinely funny, as well as teachers who freely disclosed their own personal experiences and struggles. Common to all of the accounts in this chorus of praise and appreciation from students was a sense that the teacher in question had somehow seen and known the writer as a distinctive individual. Especially touching were the boys who identified themselves as frustrated and unsuccessful in their studies but experienced a transformation in understanding and motivation as a result of a teacher’s reaching out to him.
Michael C. Reichert (Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies that Work -- and Why)
1. If postmodern thought has tried to gag God, unsuccessfully, by its radical hermeneutics and its innovative epistemology, the church is in danger of gagging God in quite another way. The church in Laodicea, toward the end of the first century, thought of itself as farsighted, respectable, basically well off. From the perspective of the exalted Christ, however, it was blind, naked, bankrupt. The nearby town of Colossae enjoyed water that was fresh and cold, and therefore useful; the nearby town of Hierapolis enjoyed hotsprings where people went to take the cure: its water, too, was useful. But Laodicea’s foul water was channeled in through stone pipes, and it was proverbial for its nauseating taste. The church had become much like the water it drank: neither hot and useful, nor cold and useful, but merely nauseating. Jesus is prepared to spue this church out of his mouth (Rev. 3:16). This church makes the exalted Jesus gag. I cannot escape the dreadful feeling that modern evangelicalism in the West more successfully effects the gagging of God, in this sense, than all the postmodernists together, in the other sense. 2. This calls for repentance. The things from which we must turn are not so much individual sins—greed, pride, sexual promiscuity, or the like, as ugly and as evil as they are—as fundamental heart attitudes that squeeze God and his Word and his glory to the periphery, while we get on with religion and self-fulfillment. 3. At issue is not only what we must turn from, but also what we must turn to: We will not be able to recover the vision and understanding of God’s grandeur until we recover an understanding of ourselves as creatures who have been made to know such grandeur. This must begin with the recovery of the idea that as beings made in God’s image, we are fundamentally moral beings, not consumers, that the satisfaction of our psychological needs pales in significance when compared with the enduring value of doing what is right. Religious consumers want to have a spirituality for the same reason that they want to drive a stylish and expensive auto. Costly obedience is as foreign to them in matters spiritual as self-denial is in matters material. In a culture filled with such people, restoring weight to God is going to involve much more than simply getting some doctrine straight; it’s going to entail a complete reconstruction of the modern self-absorbed pastiche personality.94 4. It follows that teachers and preachers in seminaries and churches must be people “for whom the great issue is the knowledge of God,”95 whatever their area of specialization might be. Preachers and teachers who do not see this point and passionately hold to it are worse than useless: they are dangerous, because they are diverting.
D.A. Carson (The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism)
The difference between a successful and an unsuccessful person is that, one has preserved his potentials while the other has processed his own!
Israelmore Ayivor (Daily Drive 365)
What has happened, and is happening, to our under-standing of what law is for is subtler but no less portentous: we have come to mistakenly define what law is for. These mistakes do not result from unsuccessful efforts to get the matter right, unfortunately. Instead, lawmakers have lately deemed the truth about persons, marriage, family, and religion to be irrelevant to law. What these goods re-ally are does not matter, they say. Worst of all, the irrelevance of moral truth has been carefully cultivated: not considering who is really a person, or what marriage really is, or how religion truly works, has been celebrated as a great virtue of American public life, a trend that has be-come dominant since World War II. More exactly, under the influence of contemporary liberal doctrines about moral “neutrality,” our determination of what law is for has become the creature of consensus, not of what is, of what is true.6 The desideratum is not to get what law is for right, but to fit it all comfortably within dominant cultural mores and conventional morality. Our lawmakers have resolved that avoiding controversy is the overriding end of law, especially when it comes to considering what law is for. Our lawmakers correctly see that law’s moral foundation is potentially a source of great controversy. What they fail to recognize is that getting it wrong promotes the greatest injustice of all.
Gerard V. Bradley (A Student's Guide To The Study Of Law)
The difference between successful and unsuccessful people isn’t really about resources that were available to them when they started out, Instead its their resourcefulness or personal initiative that makes the difference.
Derric Yuh Ndim
Many of us have gifts and talents but we either do not use them, or if we do we don’t use them to their fullest. Every once in a while we see someone who seems like an average person. They don’t seem to have any great gifts, yet they work very hard, seem persistent, and remain very successful. Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933, 30th President of the United States of America) noticed this when he said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Ron Wendel (The Scoutmaster Minute: Your Handbook for Inspiring Moments)
8. ‘Them That Stick It Out Are Them That Win’ Behind every successful person you’ll undoubtedly find a string of failed attempts. We might not always notice the failures (as the successes tend to blind us to them), but to get to the success, those people will inevitably have had to walk through a good number of ‘failures’ first. It is just the way of the world: to get to the successes, you have got to get out there and commit to fail a few times first. The key is not in the failures themselves, but in your ability to keep going. As Winston Churchill said: ‘Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.’ And it’s been my experience that the real difference between successful and unsuccessful people is simply the dogged ability to keep going.
Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
A cell is a machine for turning experience into biology.” Your current genetic makeup is the product of your environment and thus is always changing. Obviously there are limits (at least at this point) to the extent you can change your biology. You can’t make yourself seven feet tall. But psychologically, you can become a completely different person. And your psychology and biology are inseparable. Rather than “competing,” with people at your perceived skill level, compete with those who are where you want to be. In other words, always punch above your weight. Herein lies a fundamental difference between those who become successful and those who don’t. Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current circumstances while successful people make decisions based on where they desire to be.
Benjamin P. Hardy (Willpower Doesn't Work: Discover the Hidden Keys to Success)