The top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else…They let it happen, let it go. They couldn’t care less about the results.
—John Eliot (b.1971) American Psychologist, Academic
Now I know that when I am angry at my husband, I simply have to ask myself, “What am I not doing in my life that I could be doing that I am blaming him for not doing for me?”
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place; and this only by doing that which is great and noble.
—Petrarch (1304–74) Italian Scholar, Poet, Humanist
Anything that we have to learn we learn by the actual doing of it… we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
Prevent the things you have been doing and you are half-way home”.
—F. Matthias Alexander (1869–1955) Australian Actor, Educationalist
The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time.
—Richard Cecil
If everybody feels fear when approaching something totally new in life, yet so many are out there “doing it” despite the fear, then we must conclude that fear is not the problem.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
I’ve always believed in magic. When I wasn’t doing anything in this town, I’d go up every night, sit on Mulholland Drive, look out at the city, stretch out my arms, and say, “Everybody wants to work with me. I’m a really good actor. I have all kinds of great movie offers”. I’d just repeat these things over and over, literally convincing myself that I had a couple movies lined up. I’d drive down that hill, ready to take the world on, going, “Movie offers are out there for me, I just don’t hear them yet”. It was like total affirmations, antidotes to the stuff that stems from my family background.
—Jim Carrey (b.1962) Canadian Actor, Comedian
Everywhere in life the true question is, not what we have gained, but what we do.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
Cast out pride and vanity; have no thought of trying to rule over others or of outdoing them.
—Wallace Wattles (1860–1911) American New Thought Author
Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it…that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
Better do a little well, than a great deal badly.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure. As stars high above earth, you are above everything distressing. But you must awaken to it. Wake up!
—Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) Dutch Philosopher, Theologian
Too many of those with unrealized aspirations have set them aside due to fear of failure. The bigger the dream, the greater the fear. Doing less than our best allays this fear. I could have done better if I’d tried, we assure ourselves. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing it’s not our best that’s on the line. By not trying too hard, we avoid learning what our true potential is, and having to fulfill it. Doing our best can be deeply threatening. It forces us to consider what we’re actually capable of accomplishing. Once we learn that lesson, we can’t unlearn it. Our true potential becomes both a shining light we can follow and an oppressive burden of expectation that might, or might not, be met.
—Unknown
Do to others as you would have others do to you, inspires all men with that other maxim of natural goodness a great deal less perfect, but perhaps more useful: Do good to yourself with as little prejudice as you can to others.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
A cheery relaxation is man’s natural state, just as nature itself is relaxed. A waterfall is concerned only with being itself, not with doing something it considers waterfall-like.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
Believe it or not, it is not only possible to accomplish more by doing less, it is mandatory. Enter the world of elimination.
—Tim Ferriss (b.1977) American Self-help Author
If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.
—Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American Inventor, Scientist, Entrepreneur
I will just create, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I’ll create something else. I don’t have any limitations on what I think I could do or be.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focused on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
In the real world, those of us who are most productive, successful, and satisfied focus not on fixing feelings or manipulating thoughts, but on what needs to be done—and then doing it—no matter what thoughts or feelings arise.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
—Tim Ferriss (b.1977) American Self-help Author
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
When I go into my garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Well done is better than well said.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.
—Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) Scottish-American Industrialist
After you’ve been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought “She doesn’t love me,” you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: “Oh, I’m not loving myself in this moment”.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightaway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith