Quotes on First Steps

Acknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world - water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution - if we tackle them with courage and foresight.

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.

The first step is to find out what you love - and don't be practical about it. The second step is to start doing what you love immediately, in any small way possible.

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.

[Seeds Are Small.] Becoming a force of nature doesn't mean that all of our aspirations must be "grand." First steps are often small, and initial visions that focus energy effectively often address immediate problems. What matters is engagement in the service of a larger purpose rather than lofty aspirations that paralyze action. Indeed, it's a dangerous trap to believe that we can pursue onlhy "great visions."

The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.

When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people's sufferings too. That's the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows.

It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.

The acknowledgment of our weakness is the first step in repairing our loss.

A consciousness of wrongdoing is the first step to salvation...you have to catch yourself doing it before you can correct it.

This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

Admitting one's ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge.

The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot!

Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster.

All I know is that the first step is to create a vision, because when you see the vision – the beautiful vision – that creates the want power.

We have to take the first step as though there were no God. It is no use to wait for God to help us, He will not: but immediately we arise we find He is there.

...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.

When you drop the ego, you drop a whole world that you have created around it. For the first time you are able to see things as they are - not as you would like them to be. And when you are capable of knowing the facts of life, you become capable of knowing the truth. The facility of life is the first step towards truth. And ego is the most falsifying agent.

Never think that success is down to your own performance alone. If you start listening only to yourself you take the first step back towards the bottom. The flowers of victory belong in many vases.