Brian Heys – thinking out loud

I adore pithy quotes. Even though many of them are hackneyed, I find them a great way to stay motivated and focused. Here are a few I try to keep in mind from day-to-day:

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
–Source unknown

Impossible only means that you haven’t found the solution yet.
–Source unknown

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.
–Soren Kierkegaard

The only way to see a rainbow is to look through the rain.
–Anonymous

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
–Woody Allen

From success to failure is one step; from failure to success is a long road.
–Yiddish proverb

The great gift of the human imagination is that it has no limits or ending.
–Rohn

Mark Twain has come up with some classics – I like these:

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.
–Mark Twain

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
–Mark Twain

However, for me, one of the masters of the pithy quote is Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. Here are some of my favourites:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
–Steve Jobs

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
–Steve Jobs

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
–Steve Jobs

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
–Steve Jobs (The Whole Earth Catalogue)

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
–Steve Jobs