101 Inspiring Quotations by Ken Hutton - HTML preview

“Let us remember: one book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.”

~ Malala Yousafzai b.1997, activist, Nobel laureate.

COMMENT: This brave young lady is an inspiration to the whole world. She stood up to her oppressors and is still standing up to them even now, and speaking out loud and clear, even after they tried to kill her! And her message is simple: no, we can't change the whole world, but we can, and should, change a little bit of it, each one of us. If we all took action, even on this small scale, the results would be astonishing. Yes, and world-changing.

“Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.”

COMMENT: Oh, this is so true! When we're young, we have forever. The future stretches out before us endlessly. As we get older, that forever becomes finite. Then you reach a certain point and you realise ... you really could die anytime ... I mean, anytime.

It's nothing to do with age really - this enlightening realisation can happen even to a youngster. It's to do with achieving a more realistic viewpoint. Even if you're only 10 years old, your time is limited, though it might not feel like it. Make the most of it. Every. Single. Day. Of. it.

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955), theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate.

COMMENT: For many people nowadays, success is the goal. They desperately want to be rich, to be famous, to be looked up to. They want to be feted, and featured in celebrity magazines and on TV reality shows. But being rich and successful and having people look up to you can only really happen if you have something to offer.

Instead of aiming for fame or success, we should aim to be of real value, as Einstein points out. People who are of real value often achieve everything else as a bonus.

People who chase fame rarely catch it, and if they do it's often a hollow version of what they expected. If you don't think so, check out all those famous people who end up in rehab, or featuring once again in the news, this time news of their early death, through drug or alcohol abuse.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

COMMENT: It's hard, sometimes, to see the truth in something so simple. No one can make you feel bad about yourself, ever. It takes you to do that! And if you keep a tight rein on your thoughts, it needn't happen at all.

“If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

~ Bruce Lee (1940-1973), martial artist, actor, innovator, philosopher.

COMMENT: Bruce Lee certainly went beyond plateaus, and he smashed through any self-imposed limits he ever had. He set his mind firmly on becoming a world famous martial artist, and starring in record-breaking movies. He wanted to drag kung fu movies into the mainstream, and make martial arts accessible to millions.

He achieved all that, and to an unprecedented extent, but perhaps his greatest achievement was to break free from traditional martial arts and create a revolutionary art of his own design, Jeet Kune Do. He developed it through honing and improving whatever worked and ditching anything that failed to meet his exacting standards of efficacy. His influence is still very much felt, more than forty years after his untimely death, and he has become a cult figure.

“Tough times never last ... tough people do.”

COMMENT: Engrave this on your mind! Think tough! Be tough! It's nothing to do with 'macho', it's about mental toughness, the kind of attitude that will get you successfully through life (the hard bits, that is) when all else fails.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

~ Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer and humourist. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (his real name) was an American writer of great wit and skill. Among his works are 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and the sequel, 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'. William Faulkner called him 'the father of American literature'.

When he suffered a huge financial loss, due to a failed investment, he filed for bankruptcy to save him from his creditors. But notably, once he was back on his feet, he paid off every one of them in full, even though he wasn't legally obliged to do so.

COMMENT: We live such timid and timorous lives, most of us. There's so much we could do, so much we could attain, yet we settle for a tiny little bit, barely a nibble at the great feast laid out before us. Why settle for an hors d'oeuvre, no matter how tasty, when a magnificent feast awaits you?

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

COMMENT: The world really is a reflection of yourself, and this says it so eloquently.

“Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.”

COMMENT: How many times have you quit when you were inches from success?

It's happened to all of us, and we often become aware of it only much later. And when we do it can leave a very bitter taste. The trick is to learn from this. Once you've set out on a path, stick to it no matter what.

The truth is, you never know how close you are from reaching your goal. It could seem infinitely far away (and no wonder you feel despondent), and then you could make great strides inside of a day or two. But if you quit, you'll never know how close you came.

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

COMMENT: I love this kind of thought! I try to keep this in mind when things are getting on top of me. I try to remember to laugh at everything falling apart around me and pretend it's all okay.

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

COMMENT: If you can just keep this in mind when you feel yourself getting angry or annoyed, it can make all the difference.

“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

COMMENT: A great truth, revealed by a great man. And a great speaker too, to encapsulate such a profound truth in so few words.

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

COMMENT: Thanks, Groucho! I know you weren't totally against TV, since you made such great movies (although they're not really the same animal, to be fair), but it takes someone with your wit to say something like this and make it funny.

“I am free of all prejudice ... I hate everyone equally. ”

COMMENT: Don't you just love WC Fields and the things he says? If you don't, you should!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

COMMENT: Old Al knew a thing or two about a thing or two. He obviously knew that the secret to getting things done was perpetual motion ... or perpetual motivation.

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you ... I could walk through my garden forever.”

~ Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Poet Laurate.

COMMENT: I tired of poetry a long time ago, specially flowery stuff. But once in a while I come across something that screams out "Remember Me!!".

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), essayist, lecturer, poet.

COMMENT: We spend too long navel-gazing and fretting over what could have been. If we made a hash of it, let it go. Tomorrow's another day. Don't live in the past, it's a miserable, bitter country.

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

COMMENT: There's a lot of nonsense talked about 'finding yourself'. You are what you are. Get to know yourself. You won't have to look far, you've been there all along. And if you don't much like what you find, set about making changes. One day at a time.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

COMMENT: As a young man I had a few ideas of jobs I could do and I made the mistake of shying away from them because I thought I'd end up having 'too much of a good thing' and tire of it. I thought making a living doing something you really enjoyed would take the shine off it. Wow, what a misguided way of looking at things! It might take the shine off it, who knows, but it would be great to find out!

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

~ J.D. Salinger, (1919-2010), author of 'The Catcher in the Rye'.

COMMENT: A great line, from a great writer. He obviously loved

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