There are a lot of clever folk out there,
so why not bask in their wit & wisdom?

“I am easily satisfied with the very best.”
Winston Churchill

“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.”
Sven Goran Eriksson

“Confidence is preparation. Everything else is beyond your control.”
Richard Kline

“Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation ... even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.”
Leonardo da Vinci

“If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying.”
Coleman Hawkins

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself."
Peter F. Drucker

“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity."
Karl Marx“

I hadn’t the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”
PG Wodehouse

"Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know."
Jim Rohn

“Alligators? Just floating handbags really.”
Unnamed copywriter

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca
(1st C Roman philosopher)

"People spend money when and where they feel good."
Walt Disney

"I would rather have a good plan today than a perfect plan two weeks from now."
General George Patton

"The secret of all effective originality in advertising is not the creation of new and tricky words and pictures, but one of putting familiar words and pictures into new relationships."
Leo Burnett

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin

"Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity."
Thor-Heyerdahl

"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now."
Woodrow Wilson

"I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination."
Jimmy Dean

"Working is life, the only real true life. The rest is incidental."
Tennessee Williams

"Success is ninety-nine percent failure."
Soichiro Honda

"Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?"
Philip Roth

"If you live among wolves, you have to howl like a wolf."
Russian proverb

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
John Maynard Keynes

“I must point out that my rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after, and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.”
Winston Churchill

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"No-one knows what 30 megabytes look like, although we talk about them often."
Stephen Bayley

"The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram."
E. Anthony

"The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself."
Anna Quindlen

"In marketing I've seen only one strategy that can't miss and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last."
John Romero

"In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman."
David M. Ogilvy

"Marketing is not an event, but a process . . . It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely."
Jay Conrad Levinson

"The advertising man is a liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either."
Glenn Frank

"The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention."
Kevin Kelly

"One person with belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only an interest."
John Stuart Mill

"There's nothing more dangerous than an idea, when it's the only one you have."
Emile Chartier

"When prosperity comes, do not use all of it."
Confucius

"I like idling when I ought not to be idling, not when it is the only thing I have to do."
Jerome K. Jerome

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized. They die when neglected."
John Wicker

"How soon not now becomes never."
Martin Luther

"If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner."
Tallulah Bankhead

"If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it."
Jesse Jackson

"Concensus is something in which no one believes but to which no one objects."
Margaret Thatcher

"Anyone is to be pitied who has just enough sense to recognise his deficiencies."
William Hazlet

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary."
Winston Churchill

“A Martini should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously on top of one another.”
Somerset Maugham

"I confess myself to be a great admirer of tradition. The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward."
Winston Churchill

"Always hold your sales meetings in rooms too small for the audience, even if it means holding them in the WC. 'Standing room only' creates an atmosphere of success, as in theatres and restaurants, while a half-empty auditorium smells of failure."
David Ogilvy

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
Nelson Mandela

"Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected."
William Plomer

"It matters not what a person is born, but who they choose to be. "
J K Rowling

"Experience tells you what to do; confidence allows you to do it."
Stan Smith

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
Ken Olsen
(1977; founder Digital Equipment Corp.)

"The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication."
Terry Pratchett

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
Scott Adams

"The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men. The man he is and the man he wants to be."
William Feather

"If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think."
David Ogilvy

"Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any swear words."
Calvin & Hobbes
(Fictional comic characters created by Bill Watterson)

"I have a great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift."
Septima Poinsette Clark

"To have great poets, there must be great audiences too."
Walt Whitman

"Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it."
Bill Cosby

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

"People only see what they are prepared to see."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Your brand's power lies in dominance. It is better to have 50% of one market, instead of 10% of five markets."
Al Ries

"Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture."
Lydia M. Child

"When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees."
Joseph Joubert

"The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything; the young know everything."
Oscar Wilde

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."
Paul Valery

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts."
John Junor

"People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true."
Robert J Ringer

“Marketing is not a stage for humour. If you use humour in your marketing, people will recall your funny joke, but not your compelling offer. If you use humour, your campaign will be funny the first and maybe the second time. After that, the humour will be grating and will hinder the very concept that makes marketing successful - repetition."
Jay Conrad Levinson

"Friday should come sooner. Maybe there's a way to put the days of the week on 'shuffle' . . . "
Andy Riley

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
Alexander Graham Bell

"Daylight is a great disinfectant."
Anon"

Before you can score you must first have a goal."
Proverb"

Prejudices are what fools use for reason."
Voltaire

"The one thing that matters is the effort."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"If you can't, you must. If you must, you can."
Anthony Robbins

"Honesty is the single most important factor having a direct bearing on the final success of an individual, corporation, or product."
Ed McMahon

"If you be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."
Robert Southey

"Business has only two basic functions - marketing and innovation."
Peter Drucker

"Great effort springs naturally from great attitude."
Pat Riley

"I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code. "
Darkwater23
(on-line web designer forum)

"Never forget that only a dead fish swims with the stream."
Malcolm Muggeridge

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
George Bernard Shaw

"Some people make things happen, some watch things happen, while others wonder what has happened."
Proverb

"Never underestimate the power of even the smallest marketing promotion. As long as it's smart and on target, the smallest marketing promotion can make a huge impact."
April Guy

"Chaos is the law of nature. Order is the dream of man ."
Henry Adams

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."
Edith Wharton

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
Albert Einstein

"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
Dale Carnegie

"Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?"
George Moore

"Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world."
Harriet Tubman

"The men hate me, don't they?" Frank Burns
"Just your guts, sir." Radar
M*A*S*H

"History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
Mark Twain

"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get."
George Bernard Shaw

"Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success ."
Napoleon Hill

"Consumers build an image [of a brand] as birds build nests. From the scraps and straws they chance upon."
Jeremy Bullmore

"A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one."
Henry Ford

"Ordinary people can spread good and bad information about brands faster than marketers."
Ray Johnson

"A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something that is bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless."
Stephen King

"It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously."
Oscar Wilde

"In our business, except in media buying, there are few economies of scale. Client perception of creative agencies is that the bigger they are, the worse they are."
Sir Martin Sorrell

"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."
William Strunk, Jr.

"Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out."
Stephen Covey

"Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot."
Proverb

"The English approach to ideas is not to kill them, but to let them die of neglect."
Jeremy Paxman

"Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable."
Oscar Wilde

"The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents."
Salvador Dali

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."
Steve Jacobs

"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties."
Francis Bacon

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance."
Bruce Barton

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."
Bill Gates

"The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none."
Thomas Carlyle

"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward."
John Maynard Keynes

"A great leader's courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position."
John Maxwell

"Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light."
Joseph Pulitzer

"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
Sandra Carey.

"It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen."
William Bernbach

"Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind."
Marston Bates

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards. "
Oscar Wilde

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell

"It is better to live for one day as a tiger than to live for a thousand years as a sheep."
Tibetan Proverb

"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance."
Orville Wright

"Good times, bad times, there will always be advertising. In good times, people want to advertise; in bad times they have to."
Bruce Barton

"In all things it is better to hope than to despair."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The value of an ad is in inverse ratio to the number of times it has been used."
Raymond Rubicam

"Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law."
Hubert Humphrey

"Yes, I sell people things they don't need. I can't, however, sell them something they don't want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to."
John O'Toole

"Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it. . . that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear."
Dale Carnegie

"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."
Jack London

"Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
Isaiah Berlin

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
Plato

"You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
Edwin Schlossberg

"Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need."
Charles Kettering

"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."
Charles Swindoll

"Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless."
Jamie Paolinetti

"Self-plagiarism is style."
Alfred Hitchcock

"If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed."
David Viscott

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
Dr Edwin Land

"Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence."
Vince Lombardi

"One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune."
William Lecky

"We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us."
Virginia Satir

"The common denominator for success is work. Without work, man loses his vision, his confidence and his determination to achieve."
John D. Rockefeller

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."
Thomas Pynchon

"A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts."
Richard Branson

"A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one."
Henry Ford

"Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch."
Tim Berners-Lee

"The spirit, the will to win and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur."
Vince Lombardi

"Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself."
Anthony Trollope

"Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power."
Michael Foot

"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."
Theodore Rubin

"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things."
Peter F. Drucker

"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
Al Capone

"If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail."
Tariq Siddique

"Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did."
Sarah Caldwell

"A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm."
Charles M. Schwab

"A recession is when your neighbour loses their job, a depression is when you lose your own."
Ronald Reagan

"In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity."
Dr. Jamrach Holobom

"You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is."
Stephen Covey

"The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
William Wordsworth

"We have to live and treat people as if we were on the receiving end of it all."
Michael Evis (Glastonbury Festival founder)

"I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win—if you don't, you won't."
Bruce Jenner

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
George Orwell

"The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning blood-sucking parasites."
Larry Hardiman

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm."
Winston Churchill

"Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes."
Zig Ziglar

"Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life."
Sandra Carey

"Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do."
Oscar Wilde

"There's only room for one bigmouth in my organisation, and that's me."
Alan Sugar

"By nature we have no defect that could not become a strength, no strength that could not become a defect."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

"Leaders grasp nettles."
David Ogilvy

"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."
Martin Luther King Jnr

"Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much."
Robert Greenleaf

"I'm gonna live forever, or die trying."
Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"Doubt can only be removed by action."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity."
Bo Bennett

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
Robert Frost

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."
Dr Seuss

"If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting."
Stephen R. Covey

"He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. "
Elbert Hubbard

"The important thing is not to stop questioning."
Albert Einstein

"People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Abraham Lincoln

"If you speak three languages you're trilingual. If you speak two languages you're bilingual. If you speak one, you're English."
German Joke

"German humour is no laughing matter."
Mark Twain

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
Les Brown

"Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile."
Gary Ryan Blair

"Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures."
Evan Esar

"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
J. Paul Getty

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery. "
James Joyce

"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily."
Mike Murdock

"My son is now an "entrepreneur." That's what you're called when you don't have a job."
Ted Turner

"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them, the rest of us could not succeed."
Mark Twain

"In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing."
William Wordsworth

"Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet."
Robert H. Schuller

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
Albert Einstein

"One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. "
Marie Curie

"If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been."
Robert H. Schuller

"Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude."
Anon

"Never to get lost is not to live."
Rebecca Solnit

"If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone. "
John Maxwell

"He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future."
George Orwell

"I've given up on reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself."
Oscar Wilde

"If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be. "
John Heywood

"If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters."
Colin Powell

"Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information."
Peter F. Drucker

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."
Maria Robinson

"Is there anything better than to be longing for something, when you know it is within reach?"
Greta Garbo

AND FINALLY . . .

"A day without laughter is a day wasted."
Charlie Chaplin