Quotes

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

- Mike Dooley

One of my favorite stories of this kind is the local apiarist (beekeeper) in my neighborhood. He told me that the first seven years of him keeping bees he never had more than a couple of jars for himself. Even though he had gotten into it with the idea of selling honey, he found that he neighbors were so hostile to the idea of having bees around that he had to walk around the neighborhood after every harvest and hand out jars of honey. Hundreds of kilos every year was given away. Over time the neighbors figured out that the bees were not dangerous and that this man was not abusing their neighborhood but actually making it a better place. More people started keeping flowers in their gardens and eventually the man could start selling his produce rather than giving it away.

This story illustrates a point that everyone from your grandmother to Tahitian islanders, to the hardcore Neo-reactionary thinkers can agree on: be worthy. To be part of something you must first be of use to it. A community is only as strong as the effort put into it by its members. You must have something to offer. This is as true in urban beekeeping as in modern courtship.

Learn a skill, master a craft, teach something: learn, create, pass on.

@wrathofgnon

You can have anything you want, but not everything you want.

Choose wisely.

This is Daisuke Inoue, the inventor of karaoke.

He did not patent the machine because he wanted to “teach the world to sing.” He earned nothing from the billion dollar industry his invention has spawned and has no regrets.

Photo is of him and the very first karaoke machine ever made.

Napoleon Hill

Progress is not made by contented people.
- Frank Tyger

“Today it’s not too late… but one day it will be.”
-Anonymous

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

- George Elliot

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
- Dale Carnegie

A man on one side of a river shouts to a man standing on the other side, “Hey, how do I get to the other side of the river?” The other man responds, “You are on the other side of the river.”

“People who are already successful became so precisely because they were unwilling to tolerate certain aspects of their job they didn’t like. Their intolerance caused their success…

The point here is simply that you will contribute the most, as either an individual performer or a team member, when your role closely matches your strengths, and that it’s your responsibility to try to arrange your world so that it does…

…the moment you are spending less than 70% of your time on the things you love to do, identify the activities getting in the way and take action to remove them.”

-Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

The man at the top of the mountain didn’t just fall there.

Matsushita learned a very important lesson in terms of growing a company while he was trying to introduce his bicycle lamp to wholesalers. He realized that even if he had a product that was superior to anything out in the market it would not matter if he could not sell the product.

As a result, Matsushita began devising ways to create sales channels for his products by concentrating less on manufacturing and more on building a sales force, which led to a retail store network and finally placed Matsushita’s company on the map in Japan’s electrical manufacturing and retail industry.

- Founder of Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita

“This day I completed my thirty first year… I reflected that I had yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation.

I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now sorely feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended.”

He resolved: ”In future, to live for mankind , as I have heretofore lived for myself.”

“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, ‘This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.’”

Louis L’Amour