Quotes on Motivation

The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.

Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.

These are the times that try men's souls.

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started

Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.

You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing.

For me, I guess the main motivation is the satisfaction of finally understanding some tricky mathematical concept or phenomenon and then explaining it to others.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.

Small-scale fisheries should not be favoured over large-scale operations ebcause of romantic notions of rugged small operators battling both the elements and anonymous corporations. [They ought to be supported] because of the scientific evidence available to confirm the common-sense inference that local fishers, if given privileged access, will tend to avoid trashing their local stocks, while foreign fishers do not have such motivation.

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values.

In my own view, some advice about what should be known, about what technical education should be acquired, about the intense motivation needed to succeed, and about the carelessness and inclination toward bias that must be avoided is far more useful than all the rules and warnings of theoretical logic.

In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may well be the voice of this mute thing, the Cyrus cylinder.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is how do we make people pay for music? What if we started asking, how do we let people pay for music?

It is okay to be an outsider, a recent arrival, new on the scene - and not just okay, but something to be thankful for. ... Because being an insider can so easily mean collapsing the horizons, can so easily mean accepting the presumptions of your province.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

In life you need either inspiration or desperation.

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.