COMMITMENT/DEDICATION/PERSEVERANCE
1. A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you. ~Marian Wright Edelman
2. A man who won't die for something is not fit to live. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
3. A man's word and his intestinal fortitude are two of the most honorable virtues known to mankind. ~Jim Nantz
4. A successful life doesn't require that we've done the best, but that we've done our best. ~H. Jackson Brown
5. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing. ~Abraham Linclon
6. Always dream and shoot higher than you know how to. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. ~William Faulkner
7. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better. ~John Updike
8. Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. ~John Wesley
9. Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. ~Talmud (attributed)
10. Do not quit! Hundreds of times I have watched people throw in the towel at the one-yard line while someone else comes along and makes a fortune by just going that extra yard. ~E. Joseph Cossman
11. Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. ~Janis Joplin
12. Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. ~Stephen Covey
13. Effort only full releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. ~Napoleon Hill
14. Effort only releases its reward after a person refuses to quit. ~Napoleon Hill
15. Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way. ~Booker T. Washington
16. For every failure, there's an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour. ~Mary Kay Ash
17. Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. ~Kahlil Gibran
18. I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work the more of it I seem to have. ~Coleman Cox
19. I am only one, But still I am one. I cannot do everything, But still I can do something; And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. To look forward and not back, To look out and not in, and To lend a hand. ~Edward Everett Hale
20. I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. ~Frank Lloyd Wright
21. I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. ~William Blake
22. If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh
23. I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important. ~Marian Wright Edelman:
24. In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person's vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone's heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision. ~High Eagle
25. In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time. ~Anthony D'Angelo
26. Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. ~Vince Lombardi
27. It is necesary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. ~Thomas Paine
28. It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. ~Winston Churchill
29. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare. It is because we do not dare that things are difficult. ~Seneca
30. It takes 20 years to make an overnight success. ~Eddie Cantor
31. It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions. ~Charles Kettering
32. Keep your face to the sunshine and you never see the shadow. ~Helen Keller
33. Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep. ~Denis Waitley
34. Make each day your masterpiece. ~John Wooden
35. Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere. ~Barack Obama
37. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~Dale Carnegie
38. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. ~Dale Carnegie
39. Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That's dedication. ~Cecil B. DeMille
40. Nobody can implement COMMITMENT for you! ~Unknown
41. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence and determination. ~Calvin Coolidge
42. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent. Genius 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
43. One worthwhile task carried to a successful conslusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished tasks. ~Malcom S. Forbes
44. Only do what your heart tells you. ~Princess Diana
45. Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person. ~Albert Einstein
46. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~Confucius
47. Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. ~John Quincy Adams
48. People commit to an organization that, first of all, has meaning for them.
49. People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to. ~George Allen
50. Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. ~Hannah Arendt
51. Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results. ~Eugene V. Debs
52. Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you thingk they have. ~Norman Vincent Peale
53. Strength is a matter of the made - up mind. ~John Beecher
54. Sustainability isn't about the quick fix or the cheap solution. Generally it means making a commitment and trying, as best we can, to honor it. In any worthwhile enterprise, from protecting the environment to preserving a relationship, we are going to encounter difficulties. The good life is not a problem-free life. In point of fact, the process of overcoming adversity often produces some of the most rewarding experiences we will ever have. Human beings need to be challenged to 'test their mettle,' as it were. Throwing in the towel at the first sign of trouble or small inkling of distress may be the easy thing to do, but it doesn't help our self-concept. Most of life's troubles can be overcome if we are willing to work through them with patience. ~Michael A. Schuler
55. The freedom to be your best means nothing unless you are willing to do your best. ~Colin Powell
56. The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. ~Chinese proverb
57. The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. ~Walter Bagehot
58. The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating -- in work, in play, in love. ~Anne Morriss
59. The longer I live, the more I am certain that the great difference between the great and the insignificant, is energy - invincible determination - a purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. ~Thomas Fowell Buxton
60. The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt but in spite of doubt. ~Rollo May
61. The shortest way to do many things is to do only one thing at a time. ~Sydney Smiles
62. The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do. They don't like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose. ~E.M. Gray
63. The toughest part of getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom. ~Unknown
64. The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential ... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. ~Eddie Robinson
65. There's no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There is only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen. ~Wayne Dyer
66. Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. ~Henry Ford
67. Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure. ~Benjamin Disraeli
68. To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle. ~Sir William Osler
69. To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle. ~William Penn
70. To spark commitment, the vision must integrate short and long term goals, the tasks at hand, and the individual members' expectations for themselves. ~Unknown
71. Try not to become a man of success, but rather to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he recieves. ~Albert Einstein
72. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain
73. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour. Declaration of Independence. ~Thomas Jefferson
74. We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited. ~Alfred Adler
75. We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. ~Winston Churchill
76. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. ~Alexander Graham Bell
77. Whatever you do, do with all your might. ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
78. When firmness is sufficient, rashness is unnecessary. ~Napoleon Bonaparte
79. When I'd get tired and want to stop. I'd wonder what my next opponent was doing. I'd wonder if he was still working out. I tried to visualize him. When I could see him still working, I'd start pushing myself. When I could see him quit, I'd push myself harder. ~Dan Gable
80. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably. ~Walt Disney
81. When you get in a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn. ~Harriott Beecher Stowe
82. Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. ~Confucius
83. Whoever said anybody has a right to give up? ~Marian Wright Edelman
84. You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can. ~Jimmy Carter
85. You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. ~Indira Gandhi
86. You have to pay the price. You will find that everything in life exacts a price, and you will have to decide whether the price is worth the prize. ~Sam Nunn
87. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. ~Margaret Thatcher
88. You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day. ~Marian Wright Edelman