Quotable Quotes

It's been quite a while since I shared some of the interesting insights that other people have made that are stuffing my inbox. You never know which might strike your fancy and lead to financial and/or personal advantage, so here are some new ones to chew on. To wit:

— "I'm all for progress. It's change I object to." - Mark Twain. And he didn't even know about ICD-10!

— "Transitions themselves are not good or bad. What distinguishes them is how you approach them." - Norman Boone (financial advisor)

— "Statistics are like bikinis. What is revealed is fascinating, but what is concealed is vital." — Aaron Levenstein, professor of business at Baruch College.

— "The world always seems to ascribe financial success to superior intelligence." — The Economist. If this were true, why aren't we all rich?

— "Never complain and never explain." - Ben Hogan. And on a related note, "When you blame, complain or criticize, you give away your power." - Anonymous

— "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein. He also said, "I never think of the future — it comes soon enough." And “… if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

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

— "You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down." — silent film actress Mary Pickford

— "Wealth is a magnifier. If you have problems, it will magnify them." — Vic Preisser, managing director of family-wealth consultancy firm the Williams Group, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal on March 7.

— "Don't die until you are dead." — Actor/comedian Billy Connolly. The more you think about this one, the deeper it gets. However, Connolly doesn’t actually remember saying, and admits that fellow actor Dustin Hoffman claims Connolly originally said it.

— "Success unshared is failure." — Billionaire and philanthropist John Paul DeJoria.

— "His priority appeared to be everything, which is to say, nothing." — Fortune writers Jennifer Reingold and Doris Burke about Proctor & Gamble’s chief executive officer, Bob McDonald, in February 2013.

— I just love this one; "The essence of good manners was ‘to speak frivolously of serious things and seriously of frivolous things.’" - Anonymous

— "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." - Albert Schweitzer, theologian, philosopher, physician and medical missionary.

— "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevel. This seems pertinent to medical students and residents during rounds and at CPCs.

— “Pay it forward." - Many have said it. We should keep in mind that no matter how hard we have worked to get where we are, we didn't do it alone. Most doctors know this and pay it forward in a myriad of ways. The corollary is "The ball doesn't come to you."

— I will leave you with the venerable Abraham Lincoln who inveigled us with, "I am an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else."