Mark Stehlik's Favorite Quotes

• You only have to take a job for money once to realize that money isn't enough to fulfill you when you aren't doing what makes you happy.
  – Bob McConnell, basketball coach at George Junior Republic High School, on taking a $26,000 pay cut to return to the school to coach and work with kids at risk.
  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 7, 2003

• We are all what we are, in large degree, because of others who have helped, coached, taught, counseled, who set a standard by example, who've taken an interest in our interests, opened doors, opened our minds, helped us see, who gave encouragement when we needed it, who reprimanded or prodded when we needed it, and at critical moments, inspired.
  – David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning social historian,
  giving the commencement address at Dartmouth College, June 8, 2003

• I sincerely believe that there is nothing truly great in any man or woman except their character, their willingness to move beyond the realm of self and into a greater realm of selflessness. Giving back is the ultimate talent in life. That is the greatest trophy on my mantel.
  – Ozzie Smith, the "Wizard of Ahhs", at his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, July 28, 2002

• Yes, indeed, 'God Bless America'. But not so that America can stand and gloat about how superior we are and expect the rest of the world to pay homage. No, God should bless America so that America can be a beacon of light to the rest of the world; to illuminate a path to peace and justice amid conflict and discord. God Bless America so that it can live up to the mission that is symbolized by the torch held aloft in New York Harbor, 'Liberty Enlightening the World'.
  – paraphrased from a sermon by Fr. Eric Diskin, January 6, 2002

• I'm not going to fire a 2 million dollar missile at a 10 dollar empty tent and hit a camel in the butt.
  – George W. Bush (addressing senators on Capitol Hill)

• Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned.
  – Ptahhotpe (twenty-fourth century B.C.)

• There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
  – Edith Wharton

• Hell is full of the talented; heaven is full of the energetic.
  – Archbishop Fulton Sheen

• To find God, you have to give yourself away.
  – Fr. Bill Hausen, 7/28/2002

• God, grant me
  Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
  Courage to change the things I can, and
  Wisdom to know the difference.
  – Reinhold Niebuhr

• Even the Masai are wearing underwear now.
  – ostensibly, a Kikuyu tribe saying concerning the inevitability of change, but I have received the following rejoinder:
  Some time ago, I sent (this quote) to a friend who does field work in Africa. Her response:
  Thanks for the funny quote. But I don't believe it — none of the Masai in my area were in the habit of wearing underwear (not that I was in the habit of looking but when the wind was blowing it was pretty obvious)!

• In Korea, when students do wrong things, teachers usually hit students with long sticks...
  – excerpted from an admissions essay I once read (we do read them!)

• I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
  – Stephen Grillet

• That best portion of a good man's life — his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.
  – William Wordsworth

• You know, it's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that ultimately there is someone who loves our very being.
  – Fred (Mr.) Rogers, speaking at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary's 1994 commencement ceremony

• I feel that the real drama of life is never center stage, it's always in the wings. It's never with the spotlight on, it's usually something that you don't expect at all.
  – Fred (Mr.) Rogers, 2000

• The highest happiness is a by-product of worthy work well done.
  – Rene Auberjonois ("Odo", class of 1962), speaking at Commencement, 2001 (quoting from Robert S. Woodward's address to the inaugural graduating class of Carnegie Tech in 1908)

• Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.
  
  But the other four balls — family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
  – attributed to a speech made by M. Douglas Ivester, CEO of Coca Cola

• Genuine tragedy is a case not of right against wrong but of right against right — two equally justified ethical principles embodied in people of unchangeable will.
  – Georg Friedrich Hegel

• It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.
  – General George Catlett Marshall, "Military Review"

• He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
  – Herman Melville

• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
  – Aristotle

• The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
  – Walter Gagehot

• It is of no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
  – Winston Churchill

• People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
  – George Bernard Shaw, "Mrs. Warren's Profession"

• It's supposed to be hard; if it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.
  – Tom Hanks, "A League of Their Own"

• It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment.
  
  ...As Aristotle said, happiness is not a condition that is produced or stands on its own; rather, it is a frame of mind that accompanies an activity. But another frame of mind comes first. It is a steely determination to do well.
  – George Will, "Men at Work"

• Greed managed to do what two world wars and an earthquake could not — cancel the World Series.
  – WTAE sportscast, 9/15/94

• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
  – attributed to Edmund Burke, 1776

• An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
  – Victor Hugo, "Histoire d'un Crime"

• The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
  – Dante

• At the dinner with Reagan, it was obvious to Kerr that the balance was tipping against him. In the last months, [former Governor] Brown had been his most powerful defender. With him gone, Kerr was without political support, and his critics on the Board of Regents were in the ascendancy. One of the University Regents rose to make a toast to Reagan, "To the man who will bring a big breath of fresh air into the University." Reagan accepted the toast and replied in measured words that he hoped that faculty members would now teach their students to respect the morality of the community. Kerr, a Quaker, later said he thought to himself that youngsters should be taught a morality higher than that of the community.
  – Bill Boyarsky, "The Rise of Ronald Reagan"
  (from a chapter concerning the impending ouster of Clark Kerr, president of the University of California, by Governor Ronald Reagan in 1968)

• I hear, and I forget.
  I see, and I remember.
  I do, and I learn.
  – Native American saying

• Drag-racer Butch Leal, 46, who is also a good golfer, on hoping to join the Senior PGA Tour when he turns 50: "If I can do that, then hopefully I can go through my entire life without a real job."
  – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 6/6/90

• But girls aren't supposed to be weird; we are!
  – my 12-year-old son on discovering a girl that liked Ren & Stimpy

• ...there is more to life than increasing its speed.
  – Wilferd A. Peterson

• ...it's about 80 miles north of the city (I say the city because we all say the city, but if it's not your city, I should say New York City).
  – TIME magazine, 6/17/85

• Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
  – John F. Woods, game programmer

• ...there has never been a better time to be a geek with a dream.
  – 9/19/2011 New York magazine article on Silicon Valley startups

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