“A great deal more failure is the result of an excess of caution than of bold experimentation with new ideas. The frontiers of the Kingdom of God were never advanced by men and women of caution.”
– J. Oswald Sanders
Category: Quotage
Leadership is about execution
“Choose one or two ideas and execute on them fearlessly. If you try to execute on all of your ideas, you’ll probably not accomplish much. We each have to be focused on the execution of ideas, not just the creation of ideas.”
– Brad Lomenick
Conan’s take on cynicism
All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
– Conan O’Brien
Emotional labor. Bring it.
Physical labor is digging a ditch. You don’t do it cause it’s fun, you do it because it’s your job. I don’t care if you’re in the mood for it.
Emotional labor is smiling or engaging with someone or bringing insight to your job. Sometimes you do it for fun, but you always do it because it’s your job. I don’t care if you’re in the mood for it.
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. (HT Seth Godin)
Make mistakes. Do something.
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”
– George Bernard Shaw
Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon.
– Seth Godin
Quote: Christianity as a mode of life
“The decisive factor for the nature & greatness of Christianity is not found in a teaching, but in a mode of life which shapes a community.”
“It is important to note that the spiritual growth process involves far more relinquishment than acquisition. In our culture, we are conditioned to expect growth to involve acquisition of new facts and understandings. To put it neurologically, the functional systems of our brains are used to elaborating upon themselves as growth happens. We have, in a way, become attached to the very process of expanding our attachments. But spiritual growth is different. It cannot be packaged, programmed, or taught. Although some new facts and representations may help us along the way, the essential process is one of transformation, not education. It is, if anything, an unlearning process in which our old ways are cleansed, liberated, and redeemed…Spiritual growth does not establish new normalities through more habituation and adaption. Instead, it frees us from slavery to conditioning; it leads us in the direction of unconditional love.”
– Gerald May in Addiction and Grace (via Dave)
Working hard at the wrong thing …
“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.”
– Caterina (via Signal vs. Noise)
