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Don't take life too seriously; No one gets out alive

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines

A coward dies a thousand deaths... a soldier dies but once.

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”

“Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

“You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.”

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

"Human beings are made up of flesh and blood, and a miracle fiber called courage"

Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character.

The greatest pleasure in life, is doing the things people say we cannot do.

Cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste death but once.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.
Try to be better than yourself.

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

You can fight without ever winning,
but never ever, win without a fight.

Good judgement is the result of experience, experience is the result of bad judgment

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

"Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die some day without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do and what I've done, I've done with sincerity and to the best of my ability." - Bruce Lee

Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction.
Al Bernstein

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley

In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.
Anthony J. D'Angelo

There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.
Ross Perot

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
George S. Patton

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

Action is the foundational key to all success.
Pablo Picasso

Alfred Adler:

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

Dhammapada:

Just as a flower, which seems beautiful has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of a man who speaks them but does them not.

George Bernard Shaw:
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.

Goethe:

Knowing is not enough; we must apply!

Helen Keller:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night

Mark Twain:

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Dorothy Thompson:

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

H. Jackson Browne:
Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

President Reagan's Speech at Pointe de Hoc, Normandy


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Ronald Reagan -- Pointe de Hoc, Normandy, June 6, 1984 (The 40th anniversary of D-Day)
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We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied peoples joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- at the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine-guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your 'lives fought for life...and left the vivid air signed with your honor'...

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.



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