“A young concert violinist was asked the secret of her success. She replied, “Planned neglect.” Then she explained, “When I was in school, there were many things that demanded my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted the floor, and did whatever else came to my attention. Then I hurried to my violin practice. I found I wasn’t progressing as I thought I should, so I reversed things. Until my practice period was completed, I deliberately neglected everything else. That program of planned neglect, I believe, accounts for my success.”
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John C. Maxwell
“The unexamined life is not worth leading.” I would add that the unexamined leader is not worth following.”
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John C. Maxwell
“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.”
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John C. Maxwell
“If you don’t realize that you have genuine value and that you are worth investing in, then you will never put in the time and effort needed to grow to your potential.”
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John C. Maxwell
“Experience alone isn’t a good enough teacher – evaluated experience is.”
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John C. Maxwell
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
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John C. Maxwell
“The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You’ve got to keep working that talent.”
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John C. Maxwell
“analogy: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
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John C. Maxwell
“One mistake I’ve seen people repeatedly make is that they focus too much attention on their dream and too little on their team. But the truth is that if you build the right team, the dream will almost take care of itself.”
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John C. Maxwell
“Write down somewhere in the margins on this page your answer to this question: How have you changed . . . lately? In the last week, let’s say? Or in the last month? The last year? Can you be very specific? Or must your answer be incredibly vague? You say you’re growing. Okay . . . how? “Well,” you say, “In all kinds of ways.” Great! Name one. You see, effective teaching comes only through a changed person. The more you change, the more you become an instrument of change in the lives of others. If you want to become a change agent, you also must change.2 Change the leader—change the organization.”
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John C. Maxwell
“If you want to get ahead, leading up is much better than kissing up.”
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John C. Maxwell
“If you want people to remember what you say, you need to say the right thing at the right moment in the right way!”
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John C. Maxwell
