Improvement Quotes - Page 14

• The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Country, Mean, Average

  4 Copy quote

• Whatever I may be, I want to be elsewhere than on paper. My art and my industry have been employed in making myself good for something; my studies, in teaching me to do, not to write. I have put all my efforts into forming my life. That is my trade and my work.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Education, Art, Teaching

  Michel de Montaigne (2003). “The Complete Works: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters”, Everyman's Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We only learn our limits by going beyond them. I propose that we all commit ourselves to the process of Constant and Never ending Improvement.

  Tony Robbins

  Leadership, Limits, Process

  4 Copy quote

• The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Religion

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.158

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Natural selection is a theory of local adaptation to changing environments. It proposes no perfecting principles, no guarantee of general improvement

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Principles, Guarantees, Changing Environment

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.45, W. W. Norton & Company

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutionsare as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.

  James Madison

  Education, Men, Rights

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is certain that every class is interested in [educational] establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity.

  James Madison

  Education, Country, Class

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.

  Marcel Proust

  Real, Character, Joy

  4 Copy quote

• In order to have influence, you have to be influenced.

  Stephen Covey

  Leadership, Order, Self Improvement

  Stephen R. Covey (2004). “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change”, p.243, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.

  Charles Kettering

  Mean, Desire, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• It meant that New York philanthropists, New York society, would now rediscover the library. ... that learning, books, education have glamour, that self-improvement has glamour, that hope has glamour.

  Vartan Gregorian

  Education, Hope, New York

  4 Copy quote

• The Gospel does not require anything good that man must furnish: not a good heart, not a good disposition, no improvement of his condition, no godliness, no love either of God or men…….. It plants love into his heart and makes him capable of all good works. It demands nothing, but it gives all. Should not this fact make us leap for JOY?

  C. F. W. Walther

  Love, God, Work

  31 Copy quote

• The practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: Progress.  Every second of every minute of every hour, the goal is to extend one's mind and body, to push oneself beyond the outer limits of one's capacities, to engage so deeply in the task that one leaves the training session, literally, a changed person.

  Matthew Syed

  Motivational, Sports, Practice

  12 Copy quote

• No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Mistake, Mean, Progress

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Essays of Schopenhauer: Top Essays”, p.17, 谷月社

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Good And Bad, Feels, Know How

  16 Copy quote

• Real improvement is of slow growth only.

  Seneca the Younger

  Real, Growth, Slow Growth

  9 Copy quote

• Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Loss, Giving, Culture

  Friedrich Schiller (2015). “Aesthetical Essays of Schiller: Top Classic of German”, p.34, 谷月社

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Companies watch what consumers are doing like a hawk. Just as one letter to a politician can signal an insipient problem, for companies, a trend where people are beginning to switch away from one of their key products to a rival offering on the basis of either claims or real improvements on performance, that's significant.

  John Elkington

  Real, Keys, Offering

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm focused on doing what makes me happiest and on how I can make real improvements and contributions to my immediate niche, i.e. my family, friends, and local community.

  Andrew Skurka

  Real, Community, Niche

  Source: ryanjordan.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Men, Technology

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• The philosophers of industrialism, from Bacon to Bentham, from Smith to Marx, insisted that the improvement of man's condition was the highest requirement of morality. But in what did the improvement consist? The answer seemed so obvious to them that they did not bother to justify it: the expansion and fulfillment of the material wants of man, and the spread of these benefits, from the few who had once preempted them, to the many who had so long lived on the scraps Dives had thrown into the gutter.

  Lewis Mumford

  Men, Long, Expansion

  6 Copy quote

• Nonviolence in the sense of mere non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be of any improvement on the technique of violence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Violence, Technique, Doe

  Mahatma Gandhi (1981). “Collected Works”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I'm writing a score, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve on it, even when I think it's working well. I don't give up on things, and am always trying to make incremental improvements, which means I never finish writing a score early!

  Geoff Zanelli

  Giving Up, Don't Give Up, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• Listen to your conscience regarding something that you simply know you should do, then start small on it - make a promise and keep it. Then move forward and make a little larger promise and keep it. Eventually you'll discover that your sense of honor will become greater than your moods, and that will give you a level of confidence and excitement that you can move to other areas where you feel you need to make improvements or give service.

  Stephen Covey

  Moving, Giving, Honor

  Source: zenhabits.net

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• The performances of others are often selected as standards for self-improvement of abilities

  Albert Bandura

  Self, Standards, Ability

  13 Copy quote