Motivational Quotes For Everyone:
Everyone needs some inspiration sometime! Here are some quotes that you may enjoy, or find useful in your work, play, or everyday life. The starting point for this was an energetic conversation on the ESPRIT listserve for Earth Science teachers. Enjoy!
We will soon be making it possible for you to submit your favorite quotes to the list. Note that all quotes will be reviewed for appropriateness before they are posted. We will also be adding a link for corrections, in case there are any mistakes in the quotes or attributions.
"If you don't like something,
Change it.
If you can't change it,
Change your attitude.
Don't Complain."
Attributed to Maya Angelou
"In the end,
We will conserve only what we love,
We will love only what we understand,
We will understand only what we are taught."
Attributed to Baba Dioum
"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable; half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of mankind, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day.
No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all."
Attributed to Adlai Stevenson
Attributed to E.O. Wilson
Everyone needs some inspiration sometime! Here are some quotes that you may enjoy, or find useful in your work, play, or everyday life. The starting point for this was an energetic conversation on the ESPRIT listserve for Earth Science teachers. Enjoy!
We will soon be making it possible for you to submit your favorite quotes to the list. Note that all quotes will be reviewed for appropriateness before they are posted. We will also be adding a link for corrections, in case there are any mistakes in the quotes or attributions.
- "Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use."
- "Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."
- "Never, never, never give up."
- "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
- "Even Einstein asked questions."
- "Success comes before work only in the dictionary."
- "If we intend to live on this planet, we truly need to know how it works."
- "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
- "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is just opinion."
- "Losers quit when they're tired, winners quit when the've won."
- "Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."
- "Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there."
- "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
- "Gaze Upward, Look Inward, Reach Outward, Press Forward."
- "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
- "A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor."
- "When the time to perform arrives, the time to prepare has passed."
- "Chance favors the prepared mind."
- "It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask."
- "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
- "You wouldn't send text messages or talk with your friends on facebook during a sports practice.... so why do it during your science practice? (homework!)"
- "Be in the moment! Focus on what you're doing, when you're doing it!"
- "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
- "Only when something becomes a problem for "me" as one of my goal orientated actions, do I pause in full stride, as it were, in order to learn the competencies that I lack."
"If you don't like something,
Change it.
If you can't change it,
Change your attitude.
Don't Complain."
Attributed to Maya Angelou
- "Truth against the world - and right, harms no man"
- "For when I find truth, I become a better me..."
- "The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged in the way its animals are treated."
- "Those who can, teach. Those who cannot, pass laws about teaching."
- "If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to a single sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."
- "You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."
- "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."
- "I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything."
- "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny....' "
- "I love fool's experiments - I am always making them."
- "Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler."
- "Education is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena."
- "You can't fix by analysis what you bungled by design."
- "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."
- "The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness."
- "I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated."
- "Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions."
- "The conservationist¹s most important task, if we are to save the Earth, is to educate."
- "It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling."
- "Science is made up of facts like a house is made of bricks, but a pile of facts does not make science nor a pile of bricks a house".
- "If you cannot solve the proposed problem try to solve first some related problem."
- "Only ignorance! Only ignorance! How can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? And which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, `Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right..."
- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."
- "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."
- "...human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe"
- "It is in the unquestioned acceptance of things as they are now that keeps people from being creative; it is an attitude of mind rather than a lack of ability to create."
- "Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it."
- "The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
- "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
- "Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism."
- "All of us could take a lesson from the weather; it pays no attention to criticism."
- "There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew."
- "A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure."
"In the end,
We will conserve only what we love,
We will love only what we understand,
We will understand only what we are taught."
Attributed to Baba Dioum
- "Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science."
- "Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."
- "Science is basically a matter of coming to grips with the real world. In accomplishing this, it's only rival has been evolution."
- "Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
- "A good scientist (or student) knows the right answers. A great scientist (or student) knows the right questions."
- "The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
- "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph."
- "Humans live on earth, subject to nature's consent, revocable at anytime, without notice."
- "In the confrontation between the river and the rock, the river always wins...not by strength, but by perseverance."
- "Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and taking this in good humor for granted, by having a deep fondness for nature, and by being made jumpy and nervous by ignorance."
- "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
- "If you think you are indispensable, put your finger in a bowl of water and watch the hole that remains when you remove it."
- "Losers quit when they're tired. Winners quit when they've won."
- "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
- "Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."
- "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- "The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."
- "Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them."
- "Science is simply common sense at its best."
- "We shall never cease from exploring, and when we return to the place from which we started, we shall know it for the first time."
- "Science is a simple as finding patterns in the world around you, nothing more nothing less."
- "There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."
- "To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in the eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers."
- "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed."
- "We stand on the wrong side of the tapestry - a confusion of colors, knots, and loose ends. But, be assured, on the other side there is a pattern."
- "We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children."
- "Earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it; whatever he does to the web he does to himself."
- "Be very, very careful what you put into that head of yours, because you will never, ever get it out."
- "Success comes before work only in the dictionary."
"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable; half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of mankind, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day.
No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all."
Attributed to Adlai Stevenson
- "The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."
- "The impossible missions are the only ones to succeed."
- "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster."
- "Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
- "You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you
Attributed to E.O. Wilson
- "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
- "We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."
- "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
- "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
- "We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe."
- "We are just a speck, on a speck, orbiting a speck, in the corner of a speck, in the middle of nowhere."