Optional Quotes

I am trying to own my own opinions
and offer what I know as an option,
just as I would present a tray of appetizers for my guests.
Here are several choices that I have created -
if one looks good you are welcome to take it.
In other words, I am training myself to say,
"May I tell you how it is for me?"
When I ask the question, it means waiting
for the invitation to share.
It also means being prepared for my friend to say,
"No." They don't want to know.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Which beliefs bring out the best in you?
Which beliefs hold you prisoner to yesterday
and limit your options for designing a great future?
Test your beliefs with as much objectivity
as you can bring to the subject.
Be willing to let go of those beliefs
that represent your parents' opinions,
or your communities opinions, rather than your own.
Those beliefs that withstand rigorous testing,
should become the foundation of your being -
your reason for living.
Take action on those beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic.
Different people, different beliefs,
different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.
- Jimmy Carter

Let light shine through the cracks
in the armor of your staunchest beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Our grandchildren's grandchildren will shake their heads in shame
at some of the beliefs that we hold most dear today -
the question is, which ones?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
- John F. Kennedy

I am responsible for my thoughts, my beliefs, and my actions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life.
If it be true that optimism compels the world forward,
and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to
propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
- Helen Keller

Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The inherent nature of God
is not changed by our individual beliefs,
our religious institutions,
or our communal traditions.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

It is not my place to doubt the sincere beliefs of others.
My job is to question my own beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Assumptions are beliefs that don't know they are beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Belief fuels our decisions -
even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Everyone believes that their beliefs are the right ones -
that is why they are called beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Have convictions. Be friendly.
Stick to your beliefs as they stick to theirs.
Work as hard as they do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Meddling:
Everything that happens in the world, or doesn't happen,
is NOT my responsibility.
There are more than enough things that are my responsibility.
I am responsible for my thoughts, my beliefs, and my actions -
and that is enough.
It does not serve me to mind anyone else's business.
I can only make myself unhappy by trying to second guess
what anyone else thinks or does.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In religion and politics, people's belief's and convictions
are in almost every case gotten at second hand,
and without examination
- Mark Twain

Each of us holds a different image of God.
There are as many perspectives on
the nature of God as there are people.
However much any of us may choose to argue,
or to fight and kill, for our point of view,
the nature of God is an unanswerable question.
Perhaps there is a specific answer,
that we will never learn - in this lifetime.
Perhaps the nature of God is so complex and multifaceted
that each view of God describes an aspect of the complex whole.
Or perhaps the nature of God is actually defined by our beliefs.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We are born believing.
A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beliefs have evolved based on survival value.
Certain belief systems have been more conducive than others
to people living long enough to reproduce,
and having a high rate of reproduction.
It's that basic.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Recall a recent time when someone was strongly critical
of your opinions (perhaps your political or religious beliefs).
Now, put yourself in their shoes - with compassion.
Try to understand and appreciate their point-of-view -
not to change your own opinions,
but to celebrate all our human differences - in peace.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The jump is so frightening
between where I am,
and where I want to be.
Because of all I may become,
I will close my eyes and leap.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

What we think, we become.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
- The Buddha

When the vast cathedral of our being
becomes a sanctuary for all creation,
we become the face of God.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We must become the change we wish to see in the world.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dare to dream of your great success.
Become intimate with those things
which deeply motivate you
and regularly work toward
the realization of that mission.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Pay attention to rainbows, and snowflakes,
butterflies and the songs of birds,
the crash of storm-driven waves
and the mirror-surface of a quiet pond.
Let the depths of nature become a part of your innermost being.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Appreciate again and again, freshly and naively,
the basic goods of life, with awe,
pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy,
however stale these experiences may have become to others.
- Abraham Maslow

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition -
they somehow already know what you truly want to become.
- Steve Jobs

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important
as what you become by achieving your goals.
- Henry David Thoreau

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
- Winston Churchill

Learn to become still. And to take your attention
away from what you don't want, and all the emotional charge around it,
and place your attention on what you wish to experience.
- Michael Beckwith

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
If you can dream it, you can become it.
- William Arthur Ward

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations,
if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith,
so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life.
If, in short, I am an optimist,
my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.
- Helen Keller
...
Helen Keller (1880-1968) overcame being both deaf and blind
to become a famous author, lecturer, and activist
for women's suffrage, workers' rights, and ending war.

Great people are those who make others feel
that they, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain

By having a reverence for life,
we enter into a spiritual relation with the world.
By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.
- Albert Schweitzer

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
- Anonymous

It is not what we get.
But who we become, what we contribute...
that gives meaning to our lives.
- Tony Robbins

We are shaped by our thoughts;
we become what we think.
When the mind is pure, joy follows
like a shadow that never leaves.
- The Buddha

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams

When you find peace within yourself,
you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
- Peace Pilgrim

You will become as small as your controlling desire;
as great as your dominant aspiration.
- James Allen

You must not lose faith in humanity.
Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty,
the ocean does not become dirty.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

When any situation arises which tempts you to become disturbed,
say: "There is another way of looking at this."
- A Course In Miracles

To be what we are,
and to become what we are capable of becoming,
is the only end in life.
- Baruch Spinoza

What you are is God's gift to you:
what you become is your gift to god.
- Anthony Dalla Villa

When the universal sacraments of compassion and joy
fill the vast cathedral of our being,
we become the face of God.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Only when life is difficult,
are we challenged to become our greatest selves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment,
to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
- Charles Du Bos (1882-1939), from his book Approximations (1922)
(not Charles DuBois or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us
that we are nothing but acorns
and that our greatest happiness will be
to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns;
but that is of interest only to pigs.
Our faith gives us knowledge of something better:
that we can become oak trees.
- E. F. Schumacher

The only way to deal with an unfree world
is to become so absolutely free
that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
- Albert Camus

The highest reward for a person's toil
is not what they get for it,
but what they become by it.
- John Ruskin

Become more and more innocent,
less knowledgeable and more childlike.
Take life as fun -
because that's precisely what it is!
- Osho

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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Optional Quotes

Encouraging Quotes