Quotation Collection

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. Steve Jobs

• beauty

After damning politicians up hill and down dale for many years, as rogues and vagabonds, frauds and scoundrels, I sometimes suspect that, like everyone else, I often expect too much of them. Though faith and confidence are surely more or less foreign to my nature, I not infrequently find myself looking to them to be able, diligent, candid and even honest. Plainly enough, that is too large a order, as anyone must realize who reflects upon the manner in which they reach public office. They seldom if ever get there by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged. It is a talent like any other, and when it is exercised by a radio crooner, a movie actor or a bishop, it even takes on a certain austere and sorry respectability. But it is obviously not identical with a capacity for the intricate problems of statecraft. H. L. Mencken

• politicians

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

• ideas
• crisis

It's easy to feel trapped in your own life. Circumstances can sometimes feel as if they form a jail around you. But there's almost nothing you can't learn your way out of. If you don't like who you are, you have the option of learning until you become someone else. Life is like a jail with an unlocked, heavy door. You're free the minute you realize the door will open if you simply lean into it. Scott Adams

• education
• self improvement

This is the source.

If you don't have enemies, you don't have character. Paul Newman

• character

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. Henry David Thoreau

• life

If human love does not carry a man beyond himself, it is not love. If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all. It may be affection, it may be warmth of feeling, but it has not the true nature of love in it. Oswald Chambers

• love

Love isn't just about feeling good. It's about doing what you don't want to do, over and over again, if it needs to be done, for the sake of someone else. Love is really about self-sacrifice. Meg Meeker

• love

This is the source.

Honesty is more than telling the truth. It means not keeping secrets. Not only does secrecy isolate people from each other, but when you're hiding something, it's rarely good. It's usually something about which you are embarrassed or ashamed. It is a weakness. Meg Meeker

• honesty
• lies

This is the source.

It's a great strength to live knowing that if you lost every material possession, you would still have a life worth living. That means living without fear. We live frightened of things being taken away, but we don't need to be afraid. Strong relationships ground us. They complete us. You don't have to worry about losing material things; your life won't collapse without them. You can treat them as gifts and focus on the loving relationships that are really important, for they are the greatest gifts. Meg Meeker

• relationships

This is the source.