Favorite Quotes

Here are some of our favorite quotations. Enjoy!

... About Writing

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~ Gene Fowler

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it. ~ Leo Rosten

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. ~ Samuel Johnson

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research. ~ Wilson Mizner

Vigorous writing is concise. … This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell. ~ E.B. White in Elements of Style

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation. ~ William Safire

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. ~ Frank L. Visco in How to Write Good

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) Everybody drinks water. ~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ~ Sir Winston Churchill

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy. ~ Anne Tyler

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it. ~ Jack London (1903)

... About Editing

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. ~ Virginia Woolf

If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing. ~ Kingsley Amis

There is no urge so great as for one man to edit another man's work - Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. ~ T. S. Eliot

... About Training

Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training. ~ Anna Freud

It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning. ~ Claude Bernard

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. ~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

... About Consulting

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions. ~ Peter Drucker

All too many consultants, when asked, 'What is 2 and 2?' respond, 'What do you have in mind?' ~ Norman R. Augustine

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed. ~ Henry Ford

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. ~ Henry Ford

... About Planning

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable. ~ Seneca

A man who does not think and plan long ahead will find trouble right at his door. ~ Confucius

You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

A goal without a plan is just a wish. ~ Unknown

I expect to spend the rest of my life in the future, so I want to be reasonably sure of what kind of future it’s going to be. That is my reason for planning. ~ Charles Kettering

Custer had a plan. ~ Tom Costello, owner of Upstreme, Inc.

... About Change Management

With change, comes opportunity. ~ Ann Grove, President, Logical Writing Solutions, Inc.

It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps. ~ American proverb

Readiness for opportunity makes for success. Opportunity often comes by accident; readiness never does. ~ Samuel Rayburn

The way to do things is to begin. ~ Horace Greely

An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it. ~ Bill Bernbach

When people can see which direction the leaders are going in it becomes easier to motivate them. ~ Lakshmi Mittal

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish playwright and critic

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. ~ Giuseppe di Lampedusa 1896-1957, Italian writer in The Leopard

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength, but through persistence. ~ Buddha

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. ~ Thomas J. Watson

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered. ~ Nelson Mandela

... About Solving Problems

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. ~ Albert Einstein

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

...you'll never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision. ~ David Mahoney

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

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong. ~ H. L. Mencken

... About Pursuing Excellence

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. ~ Albert Einstein

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~ Bill Cosby

If you increase your success by even a mere 10 percent, you have become 10 percent more effective as a leader than you were before. ~ Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People

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

Motivation will almost always beat mere talent. ~ Norman R. Augustine, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation

Enthusiasts are fighters. They have fortitude. They have staying qualities. Enthusiasm is at the bottom of all progress! With it there is accomplishment. Without it there are only alibis. ~ Henry Ford

It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final. ~ Roger Babson, businessman and writer, founder of Babson College of Massachusetts, 1875 – 1967

There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulties or your alter yourself to meet them. ~ Phyllis Bottome

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself. ~ Bernard Baruch

The road is a long one from the projection of a thing to its accomplishment. ~ Moliere

It is only by painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job. ~ Dr. George Crane

If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. ~ Theodore Isaac Rubin

The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become. ~ Ben Herbster

... About Pursuing Education

Nine tenths of education is encouragement. ~ Anatole France, French poet, journalist, and novelist

No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude. ~ T S Eliot

Genius without education is like silver in the mine. ~ Ben Franklin

The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions. ~ Bishop Creighton

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. ~ Ben Franklin

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. ~ Albert Einstein, B.F. Skinner, or John Dryden, depending on who you ask

A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep. ~ W.H. Auden, American poet

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink. ~ Ben Franklin

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. ~ Flannery O’Connor

... About Communicating

We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge. ~ Rutherford Rogers

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. ~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Make it as simple as possible. But no simpler. - Albert Einstein

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly - Dali Lama

Supposing is good, but finding out is better. - Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it will take longer to download . ~ Unknown

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. ~ Chinese proverb

... About Technology

The real technology -- behind all our other technologies -- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in. ~ Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian-born poet, novelist, and lecturer and commentator on NPR's All Things Considered

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. ~ Albert Einstein

... About Reading

Wear the old coat and buy the new book. ~ Austin Phel

When I get a little money I buy books. If any is left, then I buy food and clothes. ~ Erasmus

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read. ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. ~ François Marie Arouet (Voltaire)

Why do we read? We read to know we are not alone. ~ C.S.Lewis

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. ~ Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island . . . and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life. ~ Walt Disney

Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack. ~ Virginia Woolf

Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum. ~ Henry Miller