Quotes & Sayings About Initiating Things

Because introverts are typically good listeners and, at least, have the appearance of calmness, we are attractive to emotionally needy people. Introverts, gratified that other people are initiating with them, can easily get caught in these exhausting and unsatisfying relationships. — Adam S. McHugh

Ronald Reagan is directly responsible for initiating the fame of Marilyn Monroe. — Bill O'Reilly

And then there is Pythagoras. The legend is that the founder of theoretical mathematics was so outraged when one of his students, the haplessly gifted Hippasus, discovered irrational numbers21 that he sent the poor fellow out on a raft to drown, initiating a venerable tradition of professors mistreating their graduate students. — Rebecca Goldstein

David Eagleman describes how you can take a male stickleback fish and have a female fish trespass on its territory. The male gets confused, because it wants to mate with the female, but it also wants to defend its territory. As a result, the male stickleback fish will simultaneously attack the female while initiating courtship behavior. The male is driven into a frenzy, trying to woo and kill the female at the same time. This works for mice as well. Put an electrode in front of a piece of cheese. If the mouse gets too close, the electrode will shock it. One feedback loop tells the mouse to eat the cheese, but another one tells the mouse to stay away and avoid being shocked. By adjusting the location of the electrode, you can get the mouse to oscillate, torn between two conflicting feedback loops. — Michio Kaku

My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move. — Billy Collins

Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you'll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors' companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager's intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset. — Seth Godin

None the less, you have my leave, if only that you might ensure your spies are made aware of precisely when her spies make their report, so that they in turn may report to you and you may then report to me. Although what I am to do with such knowledge will no doubt escape me, given that the event initiating these flurries of reporting is none other than the one occurring right now in this room. — Steven Erikson

Ethan sidled next to me, a hand propped on the shelf. "Come here often?" he said. "Excuse me?" "I see you're here in this" - he gestured at the shelves - "library all alone. You must be a student here?" He traced a fingertip down the hollow of my throat, lifting goose bumps on my arms. Since my mind hardly worked when he did things like that, it took a moment for his words to register. Was he initiating a bout of role-playing ... about a library? "Ethan Sullivan," I marveled. "You have a library fantasy." He smiled slyly. "I have a doctoral-student-turned-vampire fantasy. — Chloe Neill

With Presley as catalyst, the teenagers of America let out a collective wail, initiating the liberation of felt experience that would find its culmination in the following decade. This rupture transformed the way a whole generation thought about their most intimate selves: their bodies and minds, their sexuality, their race, and their basic mode of relating to the world. In fact, to a large degree, we still live in the space that Presley and his contemporaries cleaved into the darkness, to employ a Jamesian trope.[149] — Grant Maxwell

Upbringing is an immeasurable and subtle influence upon ma's soul. It is completely indirect through love, examples, forgiveness, and punishment with the intention of initiating an inner activity in man himself. Drill , being essentially bestial, is a system of measures and action taken to force a certain behavior, the so-called right behavior, upon a human being. Upbringing belongs to man; drill is designed for the animal. By means of drill, it is possible to form citizens who obey the law not out of respect but out of fear or habit. Their inside may be dead, their feelings withered; yet, they still do not break the law because they have been drilled. — Alija Izetbegovic

It was interesting that feminists of my generation told me: You are discouraging younger women; you are confirming stereotypes of women; you are opening a door, initiating a debate, that will harm our movement. And my point was: We are already having this debate, especially in the younger generation. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

I am fortunate enough with my career that I can speak out to the masses and hopefully be a part of initiating change. — Lance Bass

The goal has never been to always succeed. The goal is to be allowed to keep initiating. — Seth Godin

One charming characteristic of many flank attacks I could mention is that they do not very often lead to simplification: if the attack is parried, there usually are still opportunities left for initiating action in another sector. — Bent Larsen

I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue. If it does, I can feel a sense of momentum - the poem finds a reason for continuing. — Billy Collins

This is not about how hot you are. That doesn't make someone any more or any less desirable. I believe there is a soul mate for everyone because I found mine. Attraction is only the smallest part of when it happens to you. It may be the initiating factor, but it isn't what seals you to them. There is a deep, sad part of you that opens showing what you are all about inside and out. First, you are afraid. Then, that fear and sadness gets pushed out by an overwhelming urge to give everything of yourself. Yet, you still hold back. At some point, you come to reality and it hits you who you're with. It's the one you've been waiting for. The one who can break you into a thousand pieces with one look. One word. One action. Cas can destroy me if he really wanted to. — Cyndi Goodgame

Closeness to people may look like scary, mind-boggling business, but it doesn't have to be that scary. And it's not that difficult. It even feels good, when we relax and let it happen. It's okay to feel afraid of closeness and love, but it's also okay to allow ourselves to love and feel close to people. It's okay to give and receive love. We can make good decisions about who to love and when to do that. It's okay for us to be who we are around people. Take the risk of doing that. We can trust ourselves. We can go through the awkwardness and friction of initiating relationships. We can find people who are safe to trust. We can open up, become honest, and be who we are. We can even handle feeling hurt or rejected from time to time. We can love without losing ourselves or giving up our boundaries. We can love and think at the same time. We can take off our track shoes. — Melody Beattie

The Samoan puts the burden of amatory success upon the man and believes that women need more initiating, more time for maturing of sexual feeling. A man who fails to satisfy a woman is looked upon as a clumsy, inept blunderer. — Margaret Mead

I've no interest on initiating a fashion trend on Coruscant or anywhere else. I simply want a uniform that fits - Tarkin — James Luceno

I enjoy the process of writing collaboration so there's some stuff that already that may happen and then some stuff that I'm initiating that I may write on my own. — Oren Moverman

Freedom, liberty, individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them, is critical to me. — Jimmy Wales

Often it isn't the initiating trauma that creates seemingly insurmountable pain, but the lack of support after. — S. Kelley Harrell

Truth is not negative. Truth helps us see things from a fresh perspective. Truth educates, creates awareness, and is the first step to initiating any real and lasting change. — Tonya Sheridan

So I told him that I don't look for boyfriends; I look for a person, then if the person happens to be the one then he's the one. And if not, then not! And I was also thinking to myself, about how I will not commit myself to a man more than he is willing to commit himself to me. I refuse to be braver. I choose to be secure. I am brave in so many areas of life and when it comes to a man I would rather he be braver than I. I would rather he commit himself to me in ways that will make my heart know him so well that I can say he swims in my blood and he walks inside my bones. But for me to throw my commitment in front of him, on the ground, to see if it's good enough? Hell will freeze over before that happens. I compromise myself in many ways, because compromise is selfless and compromise is giving. But one thing I will not compromise is my commitment. I have to feel safe to do that. I have to know that I am reciprocating; not initiating. — C. JoyBell C.

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other's alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that's for everyone to enjoy... — Lo Nathamundi

Each word's evocative value or virtue, its individual power of touching springs in the mind and of initiating visions, becomes a treasure to revel in. Besides this hold on affection a word may well have about it the glamorous prestige of high adventures in great company. Think of that the plain word "dust" calls to mind. "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was." "Dust hath closed Helen's eye." "All follow this and come to dust." "The way to dusty death." So, to the lover of words, each word may be not a precious stone only, but one that has shone on Solomon's temple or in Cleopatra's hair. — C.E. Montague

You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life. — Richard Rohr

He came to believe that this was the very sort of thing that happened when you let yourself get caught in one culture's insistence that love ought to be like this or that. The key for people like him, he ultimately concluded, in this as in most matters, was to be nimble. Your privilege as an immigrant was to pick and choose your inheritance, maintain what suited you and participate merely to the extent of your patience and interest. It was not in your nature to align with one side fully, and so you couldn't help but make a life that was both apart and among. You didn't make one choice and stick with it but, rather, hundreds of minor choices with which you created a unique path through the corridors of old traditions and the avenues of the new. And you cultivated this dividedness because you carried always the imprint of that first move -- the decision to leave home. Indeed, this initiating choice, more than anything, was your true inheritance. — Saher Alam

Develop the habit of initiating change. You'll be better prepared for whatever comes your way. — Gina Greenlee

I have to tell people that they are not responsible for their behavior. They're not creating it; they're not initiating anything. It's all found somewhere else. That's an awful lot to relinquish. — B.F. Skinner

The suffering of either sex - of the male who is unable, because of the way in which he was reared, to take the strong initiating or patriarchal role that is still demanded of him, or of the female who has been given too much freedom of movement as a child to stay placidly within the house as an adult - this suffering, this discrepancy, this sense of failure in an enjoined role, is the point of leverage for social change. — Margaret Mead

I learned that I wasn't happy. It's a terrifying thing to admit. It puts everyone around you in a state of paralysis because they think that they are somehow responsible for your sadness and can fix it. Of course they cannot. I know happiness exists somewhere and if I knew where, I would go to it and claim it. I realize I have spent my life reacting to things and not initiating them. — Adriana Trigiani

A "seducer" who boasts of initiating women into the mystery of love is like a stranger who arrives at a railroad station and offers to show the sights to a tourist guide. — Karl Kraus

I think change needs to be egoless. It's not about my leaving my fingerprints or a legacy. It's more important to be part of a process by rolling up your sleeves, being on the ground, initiating projects, starting campaigns - you know, building stuff. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that's what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the events that others have to react to. They make change. — Seth Godin

Reciprocal altruism, meanwhile, is rampant in Washington and is the primary channel through which interest groups have succeeded in corrupting government. As the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig points out, interest groups are able to influence members of Congress legally simply by making donations and waiting for unspecified return favors. And sometimes, the legislator is the one initiating the gift exchange, favoring an interest group in the expectation that he will get some sort of benefit from it after leaving office. — Anonymous

One of Eric's most basic rules is sort of a golden rule for management: Make sure you would work for yourself. If you are so bad as a manager that you as a worker would hate working for you, then you have some work to do. The best tool we have found for this is the self-review: At least once per year, write a review of your own performance, then read it and see if you would work for you. And then, share it with the people who do in fact work for you. This will elicit greater insights than the standard 360-degree review process, because when you are initiating criticism of yourself it gives others the freedom to be more honest. — Eric Schmidt

What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil. — Howard Zinn

Survivors of trauma may have difficulty initiating relationships ... — Asa Don Brown

It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new. Their support is lukewarm ... partly because men are generally incredulous, never really trusting new things unless they have tested them by experience. — Niccolo Machiavelli