Quotes About Initiative and Incentive

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit.  Try, if you can, to belong to the first class.  There’s far less competition.

— Dwight Morrow

No man knows what he can do till he tries.

— Publilius Syrus

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.  There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.  So what the hell, leap.

— Cynthia Heimel

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

— G. K. Chesterton

Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour; how sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind.

— Charles Dudley Warner

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress.  Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

— Thomas Alva Edison

Have the courage to act instead of react.

— Earlene Larson Jenks

To escape criticism — do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

— Elbert Hubbard

I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others.

— Molire

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.

— Ellen Glasgow

The oldest habit in the world far resisting change is to complain that unless the remedy to the disease should be universally applied it should not be applied at all.  But you must start somewhere.

— Winston Churchill

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

— Ovid

The man who does something under orders is not unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his will.

— Seneca the Younger

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

— Plato

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are.  I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

— George Bernard Shaw

In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins.  Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market...Hares have no time to read.  They are too busy winning the game.

— Anita Brookner

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

— Edmund Burke

The gods help them that help themselves.

— Aesop

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

— Matthew 7:7

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.

— Marian Wright Edelman

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

— Haile Selassie

The man whose life is devoted to paperwork has lost the initiative.  He is dealing with things that are brought to his notice, having ceased to notice anything for himself.  He has been essentially defeated in his job.

— C. Northcote Parkinson

Boldness in business is the first, second, and third thing.

— Thomas Fuller

Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder — and turn quickly to my typewriter.

— Sydney J. Harris, on incentive as a journalist

 “Where shall I begin, please your majesty?” she asked.

“Begin at the beginning,” the king said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

— Lewis Carroll