improvement Quotes

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”

“Let’s invite one another in. Maybe then we can begin to fear less, to make fewer wrong assumptions, to let go of the biases and stereotypes that unnecessarily divide us. Maybe we can better embrace the ways we are the same. It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”

“We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.”

“Sometimes I think God is trying to test me, both now and in the future. I’ll have to become a good person on my own, without anyone to serve as a model or advise me, but it’ll make me stronger in the end.”

“To be honest, I can’t imagine how anyone could say ‘I’m weak’ and then stay that way. If you know that about yourself, why not fight it, why not develop your character?”

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

“Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.”

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

“Wash yourself of yourself.”

“Friends, it’s not about the goal or the dream you have. It’s about who you become on your way to that goal.”

“Look for the fruits of the Spirit. ...The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, patience, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. ...Choose one that resonates with you at this moment, write it down on some Post-its, and stick it everywhere.”

“Be honest with yourself about what you’re blowing off.”

“[Benjamin Franklin]identified thirteen virtues he wanted to cultivate--temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility--and made a chart with those virtues plotted against the days of the week. Each day, Franklin would score himself on whether he practiced those thirteen virtues.”

“For her, choices were simple; either there was an action she could take to improve the situation, in which case she took it, or there was not, and everything else said on the subject was so much meaningless noise.”

“Every day that you don’t practice is a day that you’re getting worse.”

“In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”

″‘Maybe. Maybe there’s more we all could have done,’ he says, ‘but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.’ I frown and pull back. That is a lesson that members of Abnegation learn—guilt as a tool, rather than a weapon against the self.”

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves;”

“It’s very easy to be number one: find the guy who is number one, and score one point higher than he does.”

If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

“Unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”

“We don’t need to live like the elites of California, New York, or Washington, D.C. We don’t need to work a hundred hours a week at law firms and investment banks. We don’t need to socialize at cocktail parties. We do need to create a space for the J.D.s and Brians of the world to have a chance. I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

“But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in the end lose the use of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst he is busied in improving all around him, he may at length degrade himself.”

“If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.”

“He believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined. Every horse could be improved. He lived by a single maxim: ‘Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders with an otherwise intractable beast.‘”

“Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it. This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance.”

“Promise yourself to give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.”

“Grit depends on a different kind of hope. It rests on the expectation that our own efforts can improve our future. I have a feeling tomorrow will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better.”

“When things go wrong, you’ll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better.”

“As President Lincoln said in his time, ‘The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.’ ”

“Good leadership is like exercise. We do not see any improvement to our bodies with day-to-day comparisons. In fact, if we only compare the way our bodies look on a given day to how they looked the previous day, we would think our efforts had been wasted. It’s only when we compare pictures of ourselves over a period of weeks or months that we can see a stark difference. The impact of leadership is best judged over time.”

“Restoration. I like the word. The house, the land, perhaps ourselves. But restored to what? Our lives are full. It’s our zeal for all this work that amazes me.”

“When the Avro Arrow, the world’s top performing interceptor aircraft, was canceled by the Canadian government, the engineers came south to the United States and into the Space Task Group, providing much of the instant maturity and leadership needed for Mercury.”

“The most important word a man can say are, ‘I will do better.‘”

“He was so infinitely patient, so unflaggingly hopeful of George’s improvement, so unfailingly good-natured and courteous, that no one could possibly have been angry or failed to try to mend his ways.”

“It was about the least fun social situation imaginable. If terrorists had burst into the room and tried to suffocate us in hummus, it would have been an improvement.”

“They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.”

“Act, reflect. Act, reflect. NEVER act and reflect at the same time.”

“I don’t care how good you think you are, or how great others think you are—you can improve, and you will. ”

“Leaders should never be satisfied. They must always strive to improve, and they must build that mind-set into the team. They must face the facts through a realistic, brutally honest assessment of themselves and their team’s performance.”

“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you...God is change.”

“Suddenly, a new image had risen up before me, a lofty and cherished image. And no need, no urge was as deep or as fervent within me as the craving to worship and admire. I gave her the name Beatrice….”

“We then proceeded to go through the entire operation, piece by piece, identifying everything that happened and what we could do going forward to prevent it from happening again.”

“Therefore, let no man talk to me of other expedients: […] of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing.”

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others...miserable.”

“Those are the terms. To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one.”

“A staff increase may produce a temporary improvement, but the promotion process eventually produces its effect on the newcomers and they, too, rise to their levels of incompetence.”

“Move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you.”

“I saw it rolling downhill. If I can knock the lumps of it will roll better.”

“I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best. I never needed external forces to motivate me.”

“Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the top of the mountains, but to improve the man.”

“I believe in the power of social capital to improve your productivity, expand your professional options, and raise your overall quality of life.”

“One cannot improve as an endurance athlete except by changing one’s relationship with perception of effort.”

“Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be.”

“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

″...if you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”

You must resolve upon one simple and single line of conduct, and for a man of your intelligence, this plan is as easy as it is necessary; you must form honorable friendships, and by that means counteract the prejudice which may attach to the obscurity of your former life.

“Perhaps tomorrow we can do better,”

“And I wouldn’t give more than one for you. No more of your jokes! Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him not repel him. You’ll never improve a man by repelling him, especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don’t understand. You harm yourselves running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have something in common.”

“but he is improving so steadily that I think we shall see a change for the better in the spring.”