Great Throughts Treasury

"I believe this movement will prevail. I don’t mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else. Quite the opposite. I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean that the thinking that informs the movement’s goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!” In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It’s not too late for the world’s largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet’s terms. The “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on the first principles if justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the system from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money and sense to optimize out social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. “We” means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown and copper movement. What is more harmful resides within is, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame, deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, as history of violence and greed. There is not question that the environmental movement is most critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But is actually the other way around; the only way we are going to put out this fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus. Armed with that growing realization, we can address all that is harmful externally. What will guide us is a living intelligence that creates miracles every second, carried forth by a movement with no name." - Paul Hawken

"The "Help Wanted" signs are everywhere. All people and institutions, including commerce, governments, schools, churches, and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on first principles of justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the systems from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money, and sense to optimize our social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. "We" means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown, and copper movement. What is most harmful resides within us, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame , deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, a history of violence, and greed. There is no question that the environmental movement is critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But it is the other way around; the only way we are going to put out the fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus" - Paul Hawken

"A viable future isn’t possible until the past is faced objectively and communion is made with our errant history... The movement is not coercive, but it is relentless and unafraid. It cannot be mollified, pacified, or suppressed... All people and institutions, including commerce, governments, schools, churches, and cities, need to learn from life and re-imagine the world from the bottom up, based on first principles of justice and ecology... What will guide us is a living intelligence that creates miracles every second, carried forth by a movement with no name." - Paul Hawken

"We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference." - Paul Elmer More

"When you make a mistake, admit it; learn from it and don’t repeat it. " - Bear Bryant, fully Paul William "Bear" Bryant

"What are you doing here? Tell me why you are here. If you are not here to win a national championship, you're in the wrong place. You boys are special. I don't want my players to be like other students. I want special people. You can learn a lot on the football field that isn't taught in the home, the church, or the classroom. There are going to be days when you think you've got no more to give and then you're going to give plenty more. You are going to have pride and class. You are going to be very special. You are going to win the national championship for Alabama." - Bear Bryant, fully Paul William "Bear" Bryant

"All roads lead to the same place, choose your way to the end and moved away. Do not try to go in both ways at the same time… All things are manifestations of one thing only… All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there… All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step. " - Paulo Coelho

"At times, when loneliness seems to crush all beauty, the only way to resist is to remain open… Avoiding problems you need to face is avoiding the life you need to live… Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience… Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different… Be creative. Remember that we only learnt how to fly when we stopped imitating birds… Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains. " - Paulo Coelho

"I must try to enjoy all the graces that God has given me today. Grace cannot be hoarded. There are no banks where it can be deposited to be used when I feel more at peace with myself. If I do not make full use of these blessings, I will lose them forever… I refuse to walk faintly through life only to arrive safely at death... I think that, with age, people come to realize that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless sufferings… I see no contradiction between my search and personal happiness." - Paulo Coelho

"We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop… We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use in the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new. " - Paulo Coelho

"I am always nearby, when someone wants to realize their destiny… I am who I was and who I will be… I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life… I could have. What does this phrase mean? At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but, didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything… I believe in signs... what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect and attention to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take. When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making mistakes. " - Paulo Coelho

"Many parents make mistakes with their children, thinking they know what's best for them… Many years later, if someone asked her where she had come when young, how could she replied: Very nice, and lovable, and worthy to be loved… No one can learn to love by following a manual and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm." - Paulo Coelho

"People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly… People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time… People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves… People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that's why they give up on it so early, too… People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want. " - Paulo Coelho

"I could. Never will be able to understand what that means. Because at every moment of our lives there is something that could happen, but ultimately did not happen. There are magical moments that fly without them noticing, and suddenly the hand of fate altered our lives… I think that, with age, people come to realize that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless sufferings… I think that, with age, people come to realize that death is inevitable. And we need to learn to face it with serenity, wisdom and resignation. Death often frees us from a lot of senseless sufferings." - Paulo Coelho

"Is wanting to be different a serious illness? …It doesn't matter what others think -because that's what they will think, in any case. So, relax. Let the universe move about. Discover the joy of surprising yourself… Is it possible to deviate from the path God has made? Yes, but it's always a mistake. It is possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you'll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experiencing it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you." - Paulo Coelho

"Omens are a language, it’s the alphabet we develop to speak to the world’s soul, or the universe’s, or God’s, whatever name you want to give it. Like an alphabet, it is individual, you only learn it by making mistakes, and that keeps you from globalizing the spiritual quest." - Paulo Coelho

"We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu

"If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"The essence of practice is always the same: instead of falling prey to a chain reaction of revenge or self-hatred, we gradually learn to catch the emotional reaction and drop the story lines." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"There's a reason you can learn from everything: you have basic wisdom, basic intelligence, and basic goodness." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"This leads to a bigger underlying issue for all of us: How are we ever going to change anything? How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? In a potentially violent encounter, how do I communicate so that neither of us becomes increasingly furious and aggressive? How do I communicate to the heart so that a stuck situation can ventilate? How do I communicate so that things that seem frozen, unworkable, and eternally aggressive begin to soften up, and some kind of compassionate exchange begins to happen? " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"Every new theory as it arises believes in the flush of youth that it has the long sought goal; it sees no limits to its applicability, and believes that at last it is the fortunate theory to achieve the 'right' answer. This was true of electron theory—perhaps some readers will remember a book called The Electrical Theory of the Universe by de Tunzelman. It is true of general relativity theory with its belief that we can formulate a mathematical scheme that will extrapolate to all past and future time and the unfathomed depths of space. It has been true of wave mechanics, with its first enthusiastic claim a brief ten years ago that no problem had successfully resisted its attack provided the attack was properly made, and now the disillusionment of age when confronted by the problems of the proton and the neutron. When will we learn that logic, mathematics, physical theory, are all only inventions for formulating in compact and manageable form what we already know, like all inventions do not achieve complete success in accomplishing what they were designed to do, much less complete success in fields beyond the scope of the original design, and that our only justification for hoping to penetrate at all into the unknown with these inventions is our past experience that sometimes we have been fortunate enough to be able to push on a short distance by acquired momentum. " - Percy W. Bridgman, fully Percy Williams Bridgman

"If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct." - Peter Benchley, fully Peter Bradford Benchley

"When rich men are thus brought to regard themselves as trustees, and poor men learn to be industrious, economical, temperate, self-denying, and diligent in the acquisition of knowledge, then the deplorable strife between capital and labor, tending to destroy their fundamental, necessary, and irrefragable harmony will cease, and the world will no longer be afflicted with such unnatural industrial conflicts as we have seen during the past century." - Peter Cooper

"I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school." - Peter De Vries

"Teamwork is neither good nor desirable. It is a fact. Wherever people work together or play together they do so as a team. Which team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult and risky decision that is even harder to unmake. Managements have yet to learn how to make it." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"The real development I've seen of people in organizations, especially in big ones, comes from their being volunteers in a nonprofit organization -- where you have responsibility, you see results, and you quickly learn what your values are. There is no better way to understand your strengths and discover where you belong than to volunteer in a nonprofit. That is probably the great opportunity for the social sector -- and especially in its relationship to business." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"To succeed in this new world, we will have to learn, first, who we are. Few people, even highly successful people, can answer the questions, ‘Do you know what you're good at? Do you know what you need to learn so that you get the full benefit of your strengths?’ Few have even asked themselves these questions." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"After 40 years of preaching, we have convinced everybody that cash flow is more important than profit. (Everybody except Wall Street, and Wall Street will never learn that lesson. There are no slower learners than securities analysts. I can testify to that; I was one. So they and the companies they promote still run into credit crunches, which kill about four of every 10 new businesses and cripple most of the rest.)" - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"Ignorance is the most important component for helping others to solve any problem in any industry. Ignorance is not such a bad thing if one knows how to use it, and all managers must learn how to do this. You must frequently approach problems with your ignorance; not what you think you know from past experience, because not infrequently, what you think you know is wrong." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, what should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself by a master or a mistress. Knowledge workers have to learn to ask that question based on an understanding and melding of their strengths and passions. And the question must be revisited periodically: If I were not in this career today, would I have gotten into it? If not, what am I going to do about it?" - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"To use fear as the friend it is, we must retrain and reprogram ourselves...We must persistently and convincingly tell ourselves that the fear is here--with its gift of energy and heightened awareness--so we can do our best and learn the most in the new situation." - Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams

"The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"The only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization’s ability to learn faster than the competition." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge

"I am convinced that it is of primordial importance to learn more every year than the year before. After all, what is education but a process by which a person begins to learn how to learn." - Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov

"A truly free society must not include a "peace" which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace.is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential." - Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

"We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.[validity of quote disputed]" - Petronius, fully Gaius Petronius Arbiter Gasus , aka Petronius Arbiter NULL

"So I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war, to endure the same old experiences, suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own." - Philip Caputo

"Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy." - Philip Caputo

"What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother… When will American men learn how to stand up to the nagging by the intolerant, uncivil feminists whose sport is to humiliate men?" - Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly

"I think there are cultural reasons why we are suspicious of anything that has to do with beauty. One is that many of us believe that beauty requires culture. You have to have read many books and you have got to have studied in order to understand and enjoy say music or a beautiful painting. And that is absolutely not true. Reading may help us deepen our appreciation of beauty, but beauty is for everyone. It’s true that we have a possibility of increasing our gamut of beauty, increasing our aesthetic intelligence, our ability to appreciate beauty so that we don’t appreciate it only in great works of art or only in nature or only in music, but we appreciate it also in everyday life. Some people appreciate beauty even in things that are very banal and obvious. They have a greater aesthetic intelligence in my opinion. And of course there is an enormous world of inner beauty. I think we can learn to appreciate not only outer beauty, but the inner beauty of people. The beauty of honesty, the beauty of kindness, the beauty of intelligence. Appreciating beauty that is not immediately evident may take some time, but once we tune into it it’s there to stay." - Piero Ferrucci

"The most excellent and divine counsel, the best and most profitable advertisement of all others, but the least practiced, is to study and learn how to know ourselves. This is the foundation of wisdom and the highway to whatever is good. God, Nature, the wise, the world, preacher-man, exhort him both by word and deed to the study of himself." - Pierre Charron

"In order to learn forgiveness, man must first learn tolerance." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"The religion of the Sufi is not separate from the religions of the world. People have fought in vain about the names and lives of their saviors, and have named their religions after the name of their savior, instead of uniting with each other in the truth that is taught. This truth can be traced in all religions, whether one community calls another pagan or infidel or heathen. Such persons claim that theirs is the only scripture, and their place of worship the only abode of God. Sufism is a name applied to a certain philosophy by those who do not accept the philosophy; hence it cannot really be described as a religion; it contains a religion but is not itself a religion. Sufism is a religion if one wishes to learn religion from it. But it is beyond religion, for it is the light, the sustenance of every soul, raising the mortal being to immortality." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"We start our lives as teachers, and it is very hard for us to learn to become pupils. There are many whose only difficulty in life is that they are teachers already. What we have to learn is pupilship. There is but one Teacher, God Himself." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"At the cost of one failure, the wise learn the lesson for the whole of life." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"The wise in all ages… have tried to learn one thing only, and that was resignation to the Will of God. By doing this, they have reached a stage at which they could see from God’s point of view." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"To learn the lesson of how to live is more important than any psychic or occult knowledge." - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan

"I asked for strength,and God gave me difficulties to make me strong. I asked for wisdom, and God gave me problems to learn to solve. I asked for prosperity,and God gave me a brain and brawn to work. I asked for courage, and God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love, and God gave me people to help. I asked for favors,and God gave me opportunities. I received nothing I wanted. I received everything I needed. " - Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan