Social Success Quotes & Sayings

You are loved just for being who you are, just for existing. You don't have to do anything to earn it. Your shortcomings, your lack of self-esteem, physical perfection, or social and economic success - none of that matters. No one can take this love away from you, and it will always be here. — Ram Dass

Remember this, posting pictures are like speaking words, you cannot take them back. — John Patrick Hickey

The drive for equality failed for a much more fundamental reason. It went against one of the most basic instincts of all human beings. In the words of Adam Smith, "The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition"9 - and, one may add, the condition of his children and his children's children. Smith, of course, meant by "condition" not merely material well-being, though certainly that was one component. He had a much broader concept in mind, one that included all of the values by which men judge their success - in particular the kind of social values that gave rise to the outpouring of philanthropic activities in the nineteenth century. — Milton Friedman

When you have a business, you don't use Instagram as your primary selling storefront. That's what your website is for. Instead, your Instagram profile is meant to drum up interest for your business, gather followers, and direct them to your website to learn more. — Kevin J. Donaldson

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining. — Edward Hoagland

Key to success for the education of young African girls is building a model that works with communities, schools, and national Ministries of Education to build a system of protection and support around girls, ensuring that they receive the education that is their right. Financial support is provided alongside a social support system. — Ann Cotton

What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished - his development has stopped at that point. — Emma Goldman

Posting your thoughts on any social media site is like telling you most deeply held secret to the town gossip. Not a wise move. — John Patrick Hickey

To attain, and to keep, a professional-managerial job requires class-specific human capital. Developing and displaying that capital is a central preoccupation of upper-middle class life. — Susan T. Fiske

There are three qualities that every individual must have to achieve success: a Monk's patience, a Warrior's courage, a Child's imagination. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

When you educate a girl, you kick-start a cycle of success. It makes economic sense. It makes social sense. It makes moral sense. But, it seems, it's not common sense yet. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

Okay, I cannot say this without being very direct. If you are looking for a spouse or even a romance through social media, you are looking for trouble. — John Patrick Hickey

In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy. — William Poundstone

While women once acquired relationship skills to "hook," "snare," or "catch" a husband who would provide access to economic security and social status, the position of contemporary women has not changed that radically. Much of our success still depends on our attunement to "male culture," our ability to please men, and our readiness to conform to the masculine values of our institutions. — Harriet Lerner

Social media is just that - social. — John Patrick Hickey

As a success-minded person, you should always be looking to not only do your job but do it with excellence and go the extra mile. — John Patrick Hickey

The sex difference in Agreeableness puts the debate about sex discrimination in society into an interesting light. The media tends to decry the fact that the prevalence of women chief executives of large corporations is very much lower than 50 per cent. But is this really evidence that discrimination is operating? It could equally well be the case that there is no discrimination, but that fewer women want to emphasize status gain at the expense of social connectedness. Given the known relationships between Agreeableness and career success, and the known sex differences in Agreeableness, you could actually work out the expected number of women in top positions if the market is blind to sex. It would not be zero, but it would be not be 50 per cent either. — Daniel Nettle

When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. — Edward Bellamy

Give yourself permission 2 evolve. Become a philosopher; come up with your own interpretation of life and stop accepting someone else's as your truth. — Germany Kent

As Henry Dan Piper, one of Fitzgerald's most perceptive critics, has commented, his fiction heroes "are destroyed because they attempt to fulfill themselves through their social relationships. They cannot distinguish between social values like popularity, charm, and success, and the more lasting moral values." Their creator did make that distinction, however, and so was constantly surrounding his characters with a mist of admiration and then blowing it away. — Scott Donaldson

In the environment in which we evolved, the careful choice of a mate was critical to a female's success in passing on her genes. If her man was not strong enough to be a successful hunter, or not of sufficiently high rank within the tribe to commandeer food from others, her children might be in trouble. The women who were reproductively successful were those with a sexual preference for effective providers. A kind of erotic "tunnel vision" was selected for, which causes women to focus their mating effort on the men at the top of the pack - the "alpha males" with good physical endowments, social rank, and economic resources (or an ability to acquire them). — F. Roger Devlin

If you are a success in life, there are places you must go and pay to be humiliated. It is an unwritten law that human beings must be tormented throughout their lives in one way or another. If you are fortunate enough to have risen to a social level where no one does it to you for free, then you must pay for the service. — Jonathan Carroll

It's funny: I spend time in the book criticizing social media, but I'm also aware that a lot of my success is because of social media. I can broadcast myself and my work to thousands of people that are following me or my friends. I do think that social media can be good for self-promotion. — Kim Stolz

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I believe in solving social ills with business skills. — Richie Norton

We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes. — Bill Bryson

A variety of national and international studies indicate that the broad-based deployment of information technology can have a substantial impact on our nation's economic productivity and growth as well as the educational and social success of our citizens. — Tim Holden

There is no more important homework than reading. Research shows that the highest achieving students are those who devote leisure time to reading, even when the school day and year are only mid-length and homework isn't excessive. Recently, the largest-ever international study of reading found that the single most important predictor of academic success is the amount of time children spend reading books, more important even than economic or social status. And one of the few predictors of high achievement in math and science is the amount of time children devote to pleasure reading. — Nancie Atwell

Liberalism is the ideology at the center of conservative arguments against affirmative action and equal opportunity. By proposing that, all things being equal, everyone has the same opportunity to compete in the U.S. marketplace, success is determined by how hard someone works and not by their economic class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race. Ethnic and racial identities are to be assimilated, lost, and erased through the celebrated "melting pot" of U.S. culture. Liberalism thus devalues the importance of communitarian experiences and social identities as determinants or barriers to individual success. Instead, it proposes that all individuals are fundamentally equal and that, regardless of their social identity, everyone can control his or her fate through hard work, learned skills, and acquired education- the foundational myth of a U.S. meritocracy. — Isabel Molina-Guzman

There are many different experiences that cause girls to relinquish their true selves. In early adolescence girls learn how important appearance is in defining social acceptability. Attractiveness is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for girls' success. This is an old, old problem. Helen of Troy didn't launch a thousand ships because she was a hard worker. Juliet wasn't loved for her math ability. — Mary Pipher

I have always understood that money made in the patent medicine business is a practical bar to social success. — George Presbury Rowell

The future success of online social networking sites as an advertising medium depends on its acceptance as an advertising vehicle that can deliver a message to a micro-target in a manner that will be well received and that increases the likelihood of interaction. — Mary Louise Kelly

You see, I've never been free. Not one day of my life. I've always given in to the wants and needs of those around me. My confidence has always been a social mask and my success as a motivational speaker was because my mask was just so damn convincing. At times, even to me. — Kitty Thomas

Genuine confidence is a way of thinking about yourself and your abilities. Confidence is your perception of your own potential; it's a kind of long-term thinking that powers you through the obstacles and tough times, helping you solve problems and putting you in the way of success. Your confidence is quite a separate matter from your social skills. — John Eliot

Instagram, as well as all other social media platforms, is meant to complement your main marketing efforts for your business, not take over them. — Kevin J. Donaldson

It seems that the days of public modesty and concern about how we look are far from us. I will not say they are gone forever, in culture nothing is forever. — John Patrick Hickey

Treat your entire audience with the same level of care. — Cendrine Marrouat

Everything has a consequence to it. — John Patrick Hickey

Why is this important for school success? To get along in kindergarten, your child should know information like colors, shapes, seasons, holidays, farm animals, types of transportation, fruits, and vegetables - all the basics that children are exposed to through picture books, preschool, and life itself. He will be expected to demonstrate age-appropriate social standards and behavior. If he knocks over someone's art project, he should know to apologize and help pick it up. — Karen Quinn

We've come a long way from the time when the crowning achievement in a woman's life was her youthful marriage. And many would agree that this represents progress for women. But when did the search for someone to marry become self-absorbed and pathetic? This absence of social sympathy for women's ambitions to marry is all the more striking because the social world has cared so deeply about virtually every other aspect of these privileged young women's inner and outer lives. ( ... ) The achievement of a good marriage is the one area of life where the most privileged, accomplished, and high achieving young women in society face a loss of support and sympathy for their ambitions and where the social expectations are for disappointment and failure, not success. — Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Social media takes time and careful, strategic thought. It doesn't happen by accident. — Brian E. Boyd Sr.

Life is actually a series of tests. It's a social test, a happiness test, a business success test. You'd like to get A's in all of them. — Donald Trump

If someone is trying to share a laugh and you personally do not find it funny, then just move on and leave it alone. Do not steal someone else's humor. — John Patrick Hickey

Vaccination was, and is, thoroughly infused with our politics, our social values, and our cultural norms. By acknowledging and understanding the divergent reasons why we've vaccinated in the past, however, we just may ensure the continued success of vaccination in the future. — Elena Conis

The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts. — Malcolm Gladwell

The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. — Vinton Cerf

It is no longer just engineers who dominate our technology leadership, because it is no longer the case that computers are so mysterious that only engineers can understand what they are capable of. There is an industry-wide shift toward more "product thinking" in leadership
leaders who understand the social and cultural contexts in which our technologies are deployed.
Products must appeal to human beings, and a rigorously cultivated humanistic sensibility is a valued asset for this challenge. That is perhaps why a technology leader of the highest status
Steve Jobs
recently credited an appreciation for the liberal arts as key to his company's tremendous success with their various i-gadgets. — Damon Horowitz

talking about their belief in Bitcoin's eventual success (and perhaps with a bit of angst over their skewering in The Social Network): "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then you win. — Kashmir Hill

The rules from those who are politically correct restrict what you can say to or about anything in our daily life. They tell you what to call others and what others can call you. — John Patrick Hickey

Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace. — Mike Ditka

When it comes to branding and the ever-changing social media phenomenon, you're not a mushroom. In other words, you shouldn't be kept in the dark and fed a pile of...well, you get the idea. — David Brier

You look at the tremendous success of Facebook. To my mind there is not a lot of commerce going on in these social networking sites. eBay is a community anchored in commerce. It is a commerce site that built a community around it. What has not been proven is if the reverse can happen and people will go to community sites to do commerce. — Meg Whitman

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained. — Derrick A. Bell

Though so trifling, the success of our first Buffalo hunt gave us quite a social lift. — Ernest Thompson Seton

Crucial to this is what conservatives see as the essence of America - the Ladder of Success myth. As long as free enterprise flourishes and anyone with enough self-discipline and imagination can become an entrepreneur, the Morality of Reward and Punishment will hold and all will be well. The logic of conservatism locates so-called "social" problems within people, not within society. For this reason, it would make no sense to conservatives to use class and social forces as forms of explanation and justification for social policy. Nature — George Lakoff

Be a blessing to all you are connecting with on social media. Encourage, rejoice and celebrate with each and every one. You will find that it will do wonders for your own attitude as well as those who may struggle with a negative mind-set. — John Patrick Hickey

Wisdom tells us that the best time for silence is when we are mad or upset. — John Patrick Hickey

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried. — Paul Krugman

Success was individual achievement; failure was a social problem. — Michael Lewis

By no means do I think that playing games online is wrong or rude. However, constantly sending requests is an act of bad manners as well as being very annoying to the one receiving them. — John Patrick Hickey

We don't have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it. — Erik Qualman

Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations whose social order and whose behavior and attitudes are strange to us. — Ruth Benedict

Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics. — Kenneth D. Wald

There is a clear connection between developing the skills and talents of young people, and our economic success as a province. Initiatives like the Make Your Pitch competition and the Ontario Social Impact Voucher help us nurture the next generation of business leaders. We will continue creating an inviting environment for our next generation of entrepreneurs, ensuring they develop the right skills needed to succeed in a globally competitive economy and build the future of Ontario. — Brad Duguid

In order to make a success of old age, one must begin it earlier, and not try to postpone it as long as possible. In the middle of life we must stop to think, to organize our existence with an eye to a still distant future, instead of allowing ourselves to be entirely sucked into the professional and social whirl. It is then that it is important to give place little by little to less external activities, less technical and more cultural, which will survive the moment of retirement. — Paul Tournier

Why do we place such a disproportionate emphasis on sporting achievement? Why doesn't success in other fields receive similar attention ... Maybe it's because in a country that prides itself on being egalitarian, sport is intellectually and socio-economically an equal playing field. In fact, the more humble your background, the better, the underdog-turned champion is a narrative that resonates powerfully. We're far less interested in the stories of our best doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, teachers or social workers. Their triumphs do not capture our collective imaginations. — Mia Freedman

Social networking technology allows us to spend our time engaged in a hypercompetitive struggle for attention, for victories in the currency of "likes." People are given more occasions to be self-promoters, to embrace the characteristics of celebrity, to manage their own image, to Snapchat out their selfies in ways that they hope will impress and please the world. This technology creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers, using Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and Instagram to create a falsely upbeat, slightly overexuberant, external self that can be famous first in a small sphere and then, with luck, in a large one. The manager of this self measures success by the flow of responses it gets. The social media maven spends his or her time creating a self-caricature, a much happier and more photogenic version of real life. People subtly start comparing themselves to other people's highlight reels, and of course they feel inferior. — David Brooks

The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the twentieth century is the re-creation of fatherhood as avital social role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American experiment. For unless we reverse the trend of fatherlessness, no other set of accomplishments
not economic growth or prison construction or welfare reform or better schools
will succeed in arresting the decline of child well-being and the spread of male violence. To tolerate the trend of fatherlessness is to accept the inevitability of continued social recession. — David Blankenhorn

Content is fire. Social media is gasoline. — Ryan Kahn

He was a dim secondary social success
and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks
just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: "shadow play"]. — Henry James

Not everyone understand everything. — Dee Dee Artner

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL
The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot.
"We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean."
- Bradshaw On: The Family — John Bradshaw

It is far better to have 10,000 Facebook friends who are in the same category or aligned with your values or a common inter- est than 100,000 random robot followers from around the world. — Brian E. Boyd Sr.

You can't have success without trust. The word trust embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same thing is true about business, especially businesses that deal with people. — Jim Burke

Based on our badly borrowed misunderstanding of the words 'secular' and 'spiritual' we seem
to have become blinded by the dominant intellectual ideology of our times, according to which schools as secular organizations are supposed to not have anything to do with matters of the spirit. Education has, therefore, become concerned only with matters of material life (eventually leading to commodification)... This dichotomy between 'education for social success' and education for spirit' must go if we want to make Indian Education more relevant for the future of India. Education needs to become more integral, more complete through a meaningful synthesis of the two. — Beloo Mehra

Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentments fostered by the American dream, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards that accompany it. — Sonia Maasik

Posting something that is encouraging and well done compared to something that is trashy and common is the difference between eating a fine meal or the scraps from making that meal. — John Patrick Hickey

I am not an alcoholic. I'm a social catalyst. People pay me to illustrate for other partygoers the chemical process involved in transforming from one persona into another drunker, more fun one. It's a matter of going from dull point A to exciting point B. And I'm a raving success at it. So successful that sometimes I wind up at Mysterious Point C. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Improvising, I participated in the discussion, and questioned another woman in the group. I asked her how old she was and she answered, "Thirty." I replied, "No, you are not thirty but instead eighty and lying on your deathbed. And now you are looking back on your life, a life which was childless but full of financial success and social prestige." And then I invited her to imagine what she would feel in this situation. "What will you think of it? What will you say to yourself?" Let me quote what she actually said from a tape which was recorded during that session. "Oh, I married a millionaire, I had an easy life full of wealth, and I lived it up! I flirted with men; I teased them! But now I am eighty; I have no children of my own. Looking back as an old woman, I cannot see what all that was for; actually, I must say, my life was a failure! — Viktor E. Frankl

No matter what advantages you are born with
money, intelligence, an appealing personality, a sunny outlook, or good social connections
none of these provides a magic key to an easy existence. Somehow life manages to bring difficult problems, the causes of untold suffering and struggle. How you meet your challenges makes all the difference between the promise of success and the specter of failure. — Deepak Chopra

The Reformation may have resulted in a "Protestant work ethic," but this was not due to the pressure to prove one's election by worldly success, as certain social scientists ludicrously maintain. Rather, the work ethic emerged out of an understanding of the meaning of work and the satisfaction and fulfillment that come from ordinary human labor when seen through the light of the doctrine of vocation. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

It is unsettling to find how little it takes to defeat success in medicine. You come as a professional equipped with expertise and technology. You do not imagine that a mere matter of etiquette could foil you. But the social dimension turns out to be as essential as the scientific
matters of how casual you should be, how formal, how reticent, how forthright. Also: how apologetic, how self-confident, how money-minded. In this work against sickness, we begin not with genetic or cellular interactions, but with human ones. They are what make medicine so complex and fascinating. How each interaction is negotiated can determine whether a doctor is trusted, whether a patient is heard, whether the right diagnosis is made, the right treatment given. But in this realm there are no perfect formulas. — Atul Gawande

With success it's like 60% talent, maybe 20% luck and then 20% being at the right place at the right time. There are so many artists that have been passed by - even though, on paper, they're the most incredibly talented artists, they don't have the social skills to take it outside of the bedroom. — Seth Troxler

Such knowledge is probably gained in several ways. One process undoubtedly operates through social comparison of success and failure experiences. Children repeatedly observe their own behavior and the attainments of others — Albert Bandura

Every decision you ever make has its own consequences. Freedom is not the issue. You have freedom to do what you want, you just cannot do it and not pay the price for it. — John Patrick Hickey

I'm a person who acknowledges reality. I don't get up every morning and ask myself: What would I do differently if I were chancellor in a black-and-yellow (Christian Democrat and Free Democrat) coalition? The SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the (Christian Democrat and Christian Social) Union stand to weaken their own positions if they don't make this coalition a success. And we both want success. — Angela Merkel

It may sound peculiar coming from an old punk rocker, but I strongly believe that governmental policies are the only viable way to administer our long-term success as a species. I guess you could say that my attitude of 'fuck the government' is still intact. But it's more a criticism of lousy government than a statement of nihilism. The truth is, when it comes to environmental protection, the government is the best way to enact a new social awareness by establishing laws by which industries have to abide. — Greg Graffin

There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter requesting others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling. — Robert Cialdini

Civilization, comprising all the achievements of art and science, technology and industry, is the result of man's invention and manipulation of symbols - of words, letters, numbers, formulas and concepts, and of such social institutions as universally accepted clocks and rulers, scales and timetables, schedules and laws. By these means, we measure, predict, and control the behavior of the human and natural worlds - and with such startling apparent success that the trick goes to our heads. All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. — Alan W. Watts

It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced ... Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken pubic support ... When the doubt or fear expressed concerns not the success of a particular enterprise but of the whole social plan, it must be treated even more as sabotage. — Friedrich Hayek

The success of the Starbucks has been based on this balance between profitability and a social conscience. Everywhere we're doing business, were trying to manage the business through the lens of humanity. — Howard Schultz

Some historical revisionists have also attempted to diminish the role of God and religion in our nation's past. A careful examination of the records, however, makes it quite clear that religion was a very important factor in the development of our nation. In 1831 when Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to try to unravel the secrets to the success of a fledgling nation that was already competing with the powers of Europe on virtually every level, he discovered that we had a fantastic public educational system that rendered anyone who had finished the second grade completely literate. He was more astonished to discover that the Bible was an important tool used to teach moral principles in our public schools. No particular religious denomination was revered, but rather commonly accepted biblical truths became the backbone of our social structure. — Ben Carson

No matter who it is or what you think of them, never rejoice in the pain of others. It lowers you to a level you should not be at. — John Patrick Hickey

The truth is that relative income is not directly related to happiness. Nonpartisan social-survey data clearly show that the big driver of happiness is earned success: a person's belief that he has created value in his life or the life of others. — Arthur C. Brooks

In the United States the legacy of settler colonialism can be seen in the endless wars of aggression and occupations; the trillions spent on war machinery, military bases, and personnel instead of social services and quality public education; the gross profits of corporations, each of which has greater resources and funds than more than half the countries in the world yet pay minimal taxes and provide few jobs for US citizens; the repression of generation after generation of activists who seek to change the system; the incarceration of the poor, particularly descendants of enslaved Africans; the individualism, carefully inculcated, that on the one hand produces self-blame for personal failure and on the other exalts ruthless dog-eat-dog competition for possible success, even though it rarely results; and high rates of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual violence against women and children, homelessness, dropping out of school, and gun violence. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Some might complain that nuclear disarmament is little more than a dream. But that ignores the very tangible benefits disarmament would bring for all humankind. Its success would strengthen international peace and security. It would free up vast and much-needed resources for social and economic development. It would advance the rule of law. — Ban Ki-moon

Why are women so fearful? The answer to that question lies at the root of The Cinderella Complex. (...) Many women achieve a certain amount of success in their careers and professions and still remain inwardly insecure. In fact (...), it's remarkable how many women these days retain a hidden core of self doubt while performing on the outside as if they were towers of confidence. (...)
Lack of confidence seems to follow us from childhood (...) No matter how fiercely we try to live like adults - flexible, powerful and free - that girl-child hangs on (...). The effects of such insecurity are widespread, and they result in a disturbing social phenomenon: women in general tend to function well below the level of their native abilities. For reasons that are both cultural and psychological - a system that doesn't really expect a great deal from us, in combination with our own personal fears of standing up and facing the world - women are keeping themselves down. — Colette Dowling

Maybe it's a stretch to blame a broader social pathology on hyper-competitive soccer parents. Still, there is not a huge downside to asking every once in a while, Why am I doing this? We will know for certain that my analysis is wrong when we see the following obituary: Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place. — Charles Wheelan

If you look at history, even recent history, you see that there is indeed progress ... Over time, the cycle is clearly, generally upwards. And it doesn't happen by laws of nature. And it doesn't happen by social laws ... It happens as a result of hard work by dedicated people who are willing to look at problems honestly, to look at them without illusions, and to go to work chipping away at them, with no guarantee of success - in fact, with a need for a rather high tolerance for failure along the way, and plenty of disappointments. — Noam Chomsky

The precondition of success and entry to the top politics is primarily one's will - that is, making one's own decisions, because it means having to leave your home or move your family, quit social networking and build new contacts, [since] central governments are seated in capitals. — Dalia Grybauskaite