Aggressive Certainty

"I have gathered a garland of other men’s flowers, and nothing is mine but the cord that binds them." - Montaigne

A QUOTER'S GUIDE TO OPTIMISM


"Fortitudine vincimus" (By endurance we conquer)
- Shackleton family motto

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."
- Winston Churchill

"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can."
- Vince Lombardi

"So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it."
- Baruch Spinoza

"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger

"I can't spare this man, he fights."
- Abraham Lincoln on removing Ulysses S. Grant from the war

"Oh, there is no alternative but to keep pegging away."
- Abraham Lincoln on what he would do if the rebellion took hold

"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."
- Calvin Coolidge

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
- Michael Jordan

"To punish failure is a good way to encourage mediocrity. Fearful people will settle for mediocrity."
- Michael Eisner

"Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing."
- Seneca

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."
- John Wooden

"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure - or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that's where you will find success. On the far side."
- Thomas J. Watson

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Edison

"The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."
- Chinese proverb

"Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."
- Oliver Goldsmith

"Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
- Frank Herbert, Dune

"If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened."
- George S. Patton

"The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
- George S. Patton

"A person's fears are lighter when the danger is at hand."
- Seneca

"Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction." 
- William James

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."
- Marcus Aurelius

"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter."
- Phil from the movie Groundhog Day (1993)

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
- Theodore Roosevelt

"Optimism is the true moral courage."
- Ernest Shackleton

The Road Ahead or The Road Behind
by George J. Moriarty

I think the fates must grin as we denounce them and insist, the only reason we can’t win is the fates themselves have missed. Yet, there lives on the ancient claim--we win or lose within ourselves, the shining trophies on our shelves can never win tomorrow’s game. So you and I know deeper down there is a chance to win the crown, but when we fail to give our best, we simply haven’t met the test of giving all and saving none until the game is really won. Of showing what is meant by grit, of playing through not letting up, it’s bearing down that wins the cup. Of taking it and taking more until we gain the winning score. Of dreaming there’s a goal ahead, of hoping when our dreams are dead, of praying when our hopes have fled. Yet, losing, not afraid to fall, if bravely we have given all, for who can ask more of a man than giving all within his span. That giving all, it seems to me, is not so far from victory. And so the fates are seldom wrong, no matter how they twist and wind; it’s you and I who make our fates, we open up or close the gates on the road ahead or the road behind.