Attitude Quotes - Page 39

• If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change.

  William Julius Wilson

  Opportunity, People, Style

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• We tell the for-profit sector, 'Spend, spend, spend on advertising until the last dollar no longer produces a penny of value,' but we don't like to see our donations spent on advertising in charity. Our attitude is, 'Well look, if you can get the advertising donated (at four o'clock in the morning) I'm okay with that, but I don't want my donation spent on advertising, I want it to go to the needy,' as if the money invested in advertising could not bring in dramatically greater sums of money to serve the needy.

  Dan Pallotta

  Morning, Dollars, Looks

  "Do We Have The Wrong Idea About Charity?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. May 17, 2013.

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• Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character; it becomes lack of power to act with courage proportionate to danger. All this must lead to the destruction of our intellectual life unless the danger summons up strong personalities able to fill the lukewarm and discouraged with new strength and resolution.

  Albert Einstein

  Strong, Character, Personality

  Speech made in honor of Thomas Mann, January 1939.

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• [E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry the supposed atheoretical particularism of their anthropological colleagues and argue that all would be well if only the students of humanity regarded their subject as yet another animal and therefore yielded explanatory control to evolutionary biologists.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Animal, Discipline, Humanity

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas”, p.64, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We build our personalities laboriously and through many years, and we cannot order fundamental changes just because we might value their utility; no button reading "positive attitude" protrudes from our hearts, and no finger can coerce positivity into immediate action by a single and painless pressing.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Reading, Heart, Positivity

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Full House”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• Italian style is a natural attitude. It is about a life of good taste. It doesn't have to be expensive. Simple but with good taste. Luxury is possible to buy. Good taste is not.

  Diego Della Valle

  Italian, Simple, Luxury

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• The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter us taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him.

  Charles Dickens

  Spiritual, Taken, Men

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• I don't know a more irreligious attitude, one more utterly bankrupt of any human content, than one which permits childred to be destroyed.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Religion, Permit, Humans

  Daniel Berrigan, Nhá̂t Hạnh (Thích) (1975). “The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness”, Beacon Press (MA)

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• What becomes decisive to a Justice's functioning on the Court in the large area within which his individuality moves is his general attitude toward law, the habits of the mind that he has formed or is capable of unforming, his capacity for detachment, his temperament or training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it. The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize are ingredients of what compendiously might be called dominating humility.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Moving, Passion, Humility

  Felix Frankfurter, Philip B. Kurland (1970). “Felix Frankfurter on the Supreme Court: extrajudicial essays on the Court and the Constitution”, Belknap Press

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• I'm often asked, Which is more important--attitude or skill? The answer is that it's somewhat like asking which leg of a three-legged stool is most important. It is my complete conviction, based on a considerable amount of research, that if you have the right attitude, combined with the right skills, and build your attitude and your skills on a solid character base, you can enjoy long-lasting success.

  Zig Ziglar

  Character, Skills, Long

  Zig Ziglar (1997). “Over the Top: Moving from Survival to Stability, from Stability to Success, from Success to Significance”, p.11, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics throughout their history ; his attitude at the time of his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in the face of death , and his contention that the perpetrator of injustice injures himself more than his victim, all fitted in perfectly with Stoic teaching. So did his indifference to heat and cold, his plainness in matters of food and dress, and his complete independence of all bodily comforts.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teaching, Independence, Comfort

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.253, Simon and Schuster

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• The real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity. It's the objectivity, the dualistic way of looking at things underlying technology, that produces the evil.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Lonely, Real, Technology

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.

  Neil Postman

  Order, Skills, Childhood

  "The Disappearance of Childhood" by Neil Postman, (Ch. 9 : Six Questions), 1982.

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• There are some good things and some fantastic ones in Auden's early attitude; if the reader calls it a muddle I shall acquiesce, with the remark that the later position might be considered a more rarefied muddle. But poets rather specialize in muddles and I have no doubt which of the muddles was better for Auden's poetry: one was fertile and usable, the other decidedly is not. Auden sometimes seems to be saying with Henry Clay, "I had rather be right than poetry"; but I am not sure, then, that he is either.

  Randall Jarrell

  Doubt, Might, Clay

  "The Third Book of Criticism". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Changes of Attitude and Rhetoric in Auden's Poetry" (p. 131), 1969.

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• Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.

  Randall Jarrell

  Determination, Writing, Mean

  "Recent Poetry," The Yale Review (p. 237), 1955.

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• The attitude of the true scientist towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist; Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Science with Goethe 's words, "It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable." After the last word he hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, "No, not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly!

  Konrad Lorenz

  Real, Men, Hands

  "On Aggression". Book by Konrad Lorenz, Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility, 1963.

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• I was well on the way to forming my present attitude toward politics as it is practiced in the United States; it is a beautiful fraud that has been imposed on the people for years, whose practitioners exchange gelded promises for the most valuable thing their victims own: their votes. And who benefits the most? The lawyers.

  Shirley Chisholm

  Beautiful, Years, People

  "Unbought and Unbossed". Book by Shirley Chisholm, 1970.

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• Whoever the kid had been, whoever had the grand attitude, has finally heeded the admonishment of parents, teachers, governments, religions, and the law: "You just change your attitude now please, young man." This transformation in kids - from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream - is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God, which is a fantastic way of saying I don't like to see kids throw away their truth just because it isn't worth a dime in the open market.

  William Saroyan

  Teacher, Kids, Pride

  William Saroyan (1968). “I used to believe I had forever, now I'm not so sure”

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• I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

  Paul Newman

  Thinking, Noble, Exceptional

  "Paul Newman's Road To Glory". Interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly, July 1, 2002.

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• Many common problems are caused by wrong attitudes. People see themselves as the center of the universe and judge everything as it relates to them. Naturally you won't be happy that way. You can only be happy when you see things in proper perspective: all human beings are of equal importance in God's sight, and have a job to do in the divine plan.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Jobs, Sight, People

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.61, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• Intensity is a mental attitude more than a physical attitude. Many people misunderstand what intensity means. They think it means straining and sweating. No! That is a wrong meaning of the word! Intensity is to get totally involved, fully immersed and absorbed in what one is doing. Intense practice means a fast and keen mode in adjusting, correcting, and progressively proceeding.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Mean, Thinking, Practice

  B.K.S. Iyengar (2009). “B.K.S. Iyengar Yoga Wisdom and Practice”, p.112, Dorling Kindersley Ltd

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• Problems are common, but attitude makes the difference!!!

  Abdul Kalam

  Differences, Common, Problem

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• Others, one suspects, are afraid that the crossing of space , and above all contact with intelligent but nonhuman races, may destroy the foundations of their religious faith . They may be right, but in any event their attitude is one which does not bear logical examination for a faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Religious, Regret, Intelligent

  Arthur C. Clarke (2011). “By Space Possessed”, p.13, Hachette UK

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• The air of fashion, which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antigue; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Fashion, Character, Air

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• The Theatre of the Absurd ... can be seen as the reflection of what seems to be the attitude most genuinely representative of our own time.  The hallmark of this attitude is its sense that the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, that they have been tested and found wanting, that they have been discredited as cheap and somewhat childish illusions.

  Martin Esslin

  Reflection, Age, Theatre

  "The Theatre of the Absurd". Book by Martin Esslin, 1961.

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