“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.” —The Shawshank Redemption (Tim Robbins)
“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe.” —Winston Churchill
“[Heroine Margaret Schlegel was] not beautiful, nor supremely brilliant, but filled with something that took the place of both qualities—something best described as a profound vivacity, a continual and sincere response to all that she encountered in her path through life.” —E.M. Forster, Howard’s End (Three cheers for the “intangibles”—how about this for a hiring criterion?)
“The most successful people are those who are good at Plan B.” —James Yorke, mathematician, on chaos theory in The New Scientist (I love this! Improv rules!)
“Tom, what have you done this year?” —Jessica Sutherland, IIR ME (Try answering that succinctly and persuasively—one of the best questions I’ve ever been asked.)