Inspiration

Some quotes for inspiration!

On Vision and Change:

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”

--Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

--Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.:

--Margaret Mead

“Providence has not created mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced beyond which he cannot pass. But within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free. As it is with man, so with communities.”

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Chapter 6, Democracy in America

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

---Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”

--T.E. Lawrence

On Virtue and Character:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore is not an act, but a habit.”

-- Aristotle

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t -- you are right.”

-- Henry Ford

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.”

-- Mark Twain

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”

-- Richard Steele

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

-- William Shakespeare

“Ignorance breeds confidence, reflection leads to hesitation.”

-- Thucydides, II.40.3

“Speech indeed is very commonly an index of character, and reveals the secrets of the heart. There is good ground for the Greek saying that a man speaks as he lives.”

--Quintilian, Inst. 11.1.30

On Diligence and Labor:

“Few things are impossible to diligence and skill ... Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance.”

-- Samuel Johnson

“If one accomplishes some good though with toil, the toil passes, but the good remains; if one does something dishonorable with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the dishonor remains.”

--Musonius Rufus, Fragment 51

“nothing great can be bought with little exertion”

--Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 52 quoting Demosthenes, On the Chersonese 48

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

On Ethics in Government

“Yet it is not enough to possess moral excellence as a kind of skill, unless you put it into practice. . . . moral excellence is entirely a matter of practice. Its most important field of practice, moreover, is in the government of a state.”

-- Cicero's De Republica 1.2

“It is even so in a commonwealth and in the councils of princes; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your wishes, you must not therefore abandon the commonwealth; for the same reasons you should not forsake the ship in a storm because you cannot command the winds.”

-- Sir Thomas More, Utopia Book I

“We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely.”

--Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

On Action:

Substitute “Lakewood” for “the country” in the following:

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

-- (Theodore Roosevelt)

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

-- Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919), "Man in the Arena" Speech given April 23, 1910

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden