Be Different

If by saying that all men are born equal, you mean that they are equally born, it is true, but true in no other sense; birth, talent, labor, virtue, and providence, are forever making differences.[i]

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.[ii] If there are things you don't like in the world you grew up in, make your own life different.[iii] If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.[iv]

Always show the YOU in YOU that makes YOU the YOU that YOU are.[v]

The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.[vi] Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.[vii]

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.[viii] In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.[ix] If you want to stand out, don't be different; be outstanding.[x] We all have different desires and needs, but if we don’t discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled.[xi] Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind.[xii]

When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.[xiii]

Prudence is a duty which we owe ourselves, and if we will be so much our own enemies as to neglect it, we are not to wonder if the world is deficient in discharging their duty to us; for when a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others too often are apt to build upon it.[xiv]

Prudence and compromise are necessary means, but every man should have an impudent end which he will not compromise.[xv]

Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone, go far in the affairs of the world.[xvi]

Prudence is the knowledge of things to be sought, and those to be shunned.[xvii] No other protection is wanting, provided you are under the guidance of prudence.[xviii]

Prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.[xix] What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not do.[xx] The first and the best victory is to conquer self.[xxi]

People create their own success by learning what they need to learn and then by practicing it until they become proficient at it.[xxii] Unless you change how you are, you will always have what you've got.[xxiii]

Discipline is remembering what you want.[xxiv]

Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.[xxv]

He who lives without discipline dies without honor.[xxvi]

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[i] Eugene Edwards

[ii] Cecil Beaton

[iii] Dave Thomas

[iv] Anita Roddick

[v] Chidinma Obietikponah

[vi] Charles M. Schwab

[vii] M. Scott Peck

[viii] Marian Wright Edelman

[ix] Coco Chanel

[x] Meredith West

[xi] Bill Watterson

[xii] Unknown Author

[xiii] Charles Evans Hughes

[xiv] Henry Fielding

[xv] Charles Horton Cooley

[xvi] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

[xvii] Marcus Tullius Cicero

[xviii] Decimus Junius Juvenal

[xix] Samuel Johnson

[xx] Aristotle

xxi] Plato

[xxii] Brian Tracy

[xxiii] Jim Rohn

[xxiv] David Campbell

[xxv] Bertrand Russell

[xxvi] Icelandic Proverb