Michael Polanyi
Take a watch to pieces and examine, however carefully, its separate parts in turn, and you will never come across the principles by which the watch keeps time.
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If you have to drive people that hard to do their job, then you've either got the wrong people, or you've got the right people doing the wrong job.
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
It is best to love wisely, no doubt, but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.
Only when all contribute their firewood can they build up a strong fire.
I always try to turn my personal struggles into something helpful for others.
If I know what love is, it is because of you.
Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing.
Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.
Kindness is an inner desire that makes us want to do good things even if we do not get anything in return. It is the joy of our life to do them. When we do good things from this inner desire, there is kindness in everything we think, say, want and do.
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Ideals are like stars, you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.
Success is not to be pursued ; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
Self-suggestion makes you master of yourself.
Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.
It isn't hard to be good from time to time in sports. What's tough is being good every day.
Love as much as you can from wherever you are.
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts : what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.
The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don't. If you'd like to win, but think you can't it's almost a cinch you won't. Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can.
I don't like the man. I must get to know him better.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing, a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.
I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened by old ones.
Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against ?
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous, you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.
He who stops being better stops being good.
When we won't consider suggestions, we reject our own potential - but we have a right to expect people to be tactful.
Knowing is not enough we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.
Hope springs eternal.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
This is the best kind of voyeurism, hearing joy from your neighbors.
Flowing blood is proof that you're alive, if it's for the sake of those you love
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality, the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Nature does nothing uselessly.
It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.
Do not wait for leaders, do it alone, person to person.
Hi, Curly, kill anyone today ?
A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it's only human nature.
Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
Motivation is like food for the brain. You can not get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular refills.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
One, two, Freddy's coming for you.
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.
Look at every situation as if you were in the future and you were looking back on it.
Change your thoughts, change your life.
Work spares us from three evils boredom, vice, and need.
How do I look ?
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
Don't let life discourage you , everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.
If you want to win friends, make it a point to remember them. If you remember my name, you pay me a subtle compliment ; you indicate that I have made an impression on you. Remember my name and you add to my feeling of importance.
Friendship is not born of words alone.
There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity.
In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.
The one thing that separates winners from losers is, winners take action!
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
If you only look at what is, you might never attain what could be.
What ever you are be a good one.
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
Whatever you are be a good one.
You live with your thoughts, so be careful what they are.
No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
If there is a will, there is a way.
No fate is worse than a life without a love.
The willow knows what the storm does not that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.
Possibilitizing is overcoming while you're undergoing.
In addition to self-awareness, imagination, and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment -- independent will -- that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
Love conquers all things, let us too surrender to love.
Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.
You are the handicap you must face. You are the one who must choose your place. You can make goals for family, relationships, anything.
Keep your business affairs in your own hands. It's the only way to be happy.
Life is the first gift, love is the second.
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking, the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
Whoever said anybody has a right to give up ?
After every happiness comes misery, they may be far apart or near. The more advanced the soul, the more quickly does one follow the other. What we want is neither happiness nor misery. Both make us forget our true nature, both are chains -- one iron, one gold , behind both is the Atman, who knows neither happiness nor misery. These are states, and states must ever change , but the nature of the atman is bliss, peace, unchanging. We have not to get it, we have it, only wash away the dross and see it.
In love beggar and king are equal.
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
I don't know nothin 'bout birthin' babies.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Someday when I grow up, finish school and get a job, I'll start living my life the way I want someday after the mortgage is paid off, the finances are on track and the kids are grown up, I'll drive that new car and take exciting trips abroad someday, now that I'm 9 about to retire, I'll buy that beautiful motor home and travel across this great country, and see all there is to see someday.
Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.
If you wish others to believe in you, you must first convince them that you believe in them.
Things do not change we change.
No one is more definite about the solution than the one who doesn't understand the problem.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
The glue that holds all relationships together -- including the relationship between the leader and the led is trust, and trust is based on integrity.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant ?