Improve Quotes

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

The best revenge is to improve yourself. ~ Ali Ibn Abi Talib

One more time? We've done this. We've done this at least four times where there's a new government program to help homeowners who have trouble with their mortgages. None of these programs have worked. I don't know why anyone would think that this next idea is going to work. All it does is delay the clearing of the market. As soon as the market clears and we understand where the prices really are - [that] will be the most important thing we can do in order to improve home values around the country. ~ John Boehner

Spoken like a true Nipponese," Enoch says bitterly. "You never change." "Please make me understand what you are saying." "What of the man who cannot get out of bed and work, because he has no legs? What of the widow who has no husband to work, no children to support her? What of children who cannot improve their minds because they lack books and schoolhouses?" "You can shower gold on them," Goto Dengo says. "Soon enough, it will all be gone." "Yes. But some of it will be gone into books and bandages. ~ Neal Stephenson

There are always things to improve on. I want to improve on my defense, and you can never be a perfect hitter. I want to focus on just playing more and being able to improve on all parts of my game. ~ Mark Teixeira

This is an opportunity to create a better future for the NFL, to improve the game for our fans, and to expand the economic benefits for the players and teams. Staying with the status quo is not an option. The world has changed for everyone, including the NFL and our fans. We must get better in everything we do ... If both sides compromise and give a little, everyone will get a lot, especially the fans. ~ Roger Goodell

What can I do to improve my personal appearance?" "Start by bathing," her father said. ~ William Goldman

But when you say, "I am beautiful," not only does beauty, youth, and freshness start coming your way, but on the inside your spirit also comes alive. Your self-image begins to improve, and you'll start carrying yourself like you're someone special. You won't drag through the day feeling less than or inferior. You'll have that spring in your step, that "You go, girl!" attitude. Beauty is not in how thin or tall you are, how perfect you look. Beauty is in being who God made you to be with confidence. If you're a size 4, great. If you're a size 24, great. Take what you have and make the most of it. ~ Joel Osteen

God, there's nothing like embarrassing a ginger to improve my mood ~ Melissa DeCarlo

The Purpose Effect results in a higher calling, where individuals and organizations seek to improve society to benefit all stakeholders. ~ Dan Pontefract

Improving yourself is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others. ~ Dale Carnegie

If someone feels afraid to tell you honest criticism, then you're never going to improve. ~ Cole Sprouse

My life is more than a waiting period; it is an expedition. How I perceive it, and how I improve upon it is solely up to me. ~ Celeste Cooper

I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to improve the world. I have told you what I think, and that is all. I shall remain your friend even if you act contrary to my convictions, and I shall help you even if I disagree with you. ~ Milan Kundera

Humility is a virtue that is enjoined upon us. So far as the artist is concerned, with good reason; indeed, when he compares what he has done with what he wanted to do, when he compares his disappointing efforts with the great masterpieces of the world, he finds it the easiest of virtues to practice. Unless he is humble he cannot hope to improve. Self-satisfaction is fatal to him. The strange thing is that we are embarrassed by humility in others. We are ill at ease when they humble themselves before us. I don't know why this should be unless it is that there is something servile in it which offends our sense of human dignity. When I was engaging two coloured maids to look after me the overseer of the plantation who produced them, as a final recommendation, said: 'They're good niggers, they're humble.' Sometimes when one of them hides her face with her fingers to speak to me or with a little nervous giggle asks if she can have something I've thrown away, I'm inclined to cry: 'For heaven's sake don't be so humble.'
Or is it that humility in others forces upon us the consciousness of our own unworthiness? ~ W. Somerset Maugham

In sport, there is always room for improvement. Whenever I see my innings against the West Indies or Australia, I think, 'Maybe, I could have done this better or should have changed that.' See, cricket is a skill game, and one can always improve upon the impact one has on an innings. ~ Yuvraj Singh

The thought of making work that's easily consumed and quickly forgotten - what's the point? I want my work to be cohesive, to age and improve like old leather. ~ Tift Merritt

I feel I'm better now than I ever have been. You learn so much as you're doing it. I'm watching tapes and I'll see things that get me annoyed and where I know I can improve. I understand better letting the crowd play more. I've always said it was important for me who I was working with, because I like to kid around a lot. But I've also learned to use my partner better. I'm feeling good. There's no reason to stop. ~ Marv Albert

Accepting people as they are has the miraculous effect of helping them improve. Acceptance doesn't prohibit growth; rather, it fosters it. ~ Marianne Williamson

Sociology was born of the modern ardor to improve society. ~ Albion Woodbury Small

She understood that for her to excel at Oxford she had to improve her English. Her brain was in need of words to express itself fully, the way a sapling was in need of raindrops to grow to its potential. She purchased stacks of coloured Post-it notes. On them she wrote the words she chanced upon, fell in love with and intended to use at the earliest opportunity -- just as every foreigner did, one way or another:
- Autotomy: The casting off of a body part by an animal in danger
- Cleft Stick (from Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings): To be in a difficult situation
- Rantipole (from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow): Wild, reckless, sometimes quarrelsome person.
In her first Political Philosophy essay, she wrote 'In Turkey, where daily politics is rantipole, each time the system is in a cleft stick, democracy is the first thing to be severed and sacrificed in an act of autotomy. ~ Elif Shafak

The only thing that makes advice great is when you apply it and it works so try, try try. ~ Rob Liano

Improve your relationship with you. ~ Debasish Mridha

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships. ~ Stephen Covey

Finally, at every opportunity you have to move someone - from traditional sales, like convincing a prospect to buy a new computer system, to non-sales selling, like persuading your daughter to do her homework - be sure you can answer the two questions at the core of genuine service. If the person you're selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you're doing something wrong. ~ Daniel H. Pink

One positive person affects the whole universe. If you improve yourself as a human being then you will contribute for the betterment of the whole planet. ~ Hina Hashmi

There are companies that are good at improving what they're already doing. There are companies that are good at extending what they're doing. And finally there are companies that are good at innovation. Every large company has to be able to do all three - improve, extend, and innovate - simultaneously. ~ Peter Drucker

I think there's no higher calling in terms of a career than public service, which is a chance to make a difference in people's lives and improve the world. ~ Jack Lew

But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyses you is fear of making a mistake. If you have made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time. ~ Paulo Coelho

What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children? ~ Bharati Mukherjee

He who governed the world before I was born shall take care of it likewise when I am dead. My part is to improve the present moment. ~ John Wesley

My experiences have taught me that things rarely improve with a simple change of scenery. ~ Pittacus Lore

Setting is the soul of your story...Improve upon it, and it will take your writing to the next level. ~ Ruth Ann Ridley

Rather than focusing on our future, we should do our best to improve our lives now, in the present moment. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and only allow in things that won't bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that. Do you think I don't get judged and criticized at work? Well, I do - a lot! But I've decided to hear only the things that encourage me to improve, the things that help me correct my mistakes. Otherwise, I will just pretend ~ Paulo Coelho

There are some who do not learn, and who do not improve as fast as they might, because their eyes and their hearts are not upon God; they do not reflect neither do they have that knowledge which they might have; they miss a good deal which they might receive. We have got to obtain knowledge before we obtain permanent happiness; we have got to be wide awake in the things of God. ~ Lorenzo Snow

Frederick Nietzsche was important to me, in teaching that it's okay to strive to improve the human being. ~ Zoltan Istvan

A touch less ego and dash more humility will improve the quality of anything you turn your hand to. ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

When we honestly take stock of our ability, we are then granted the opportunity to improve our circumstance. Accessing where you stand is the only way to stand somewhere else. ~ Chris Matakas

Short of hiring a new staff, consider giving subpar workers a chance to improve. Tell them why they're not measuring up and give them a set amount of time to make specific improvements. ~ Danny Meyer

Delta's plan to upgrade JFK facilities will improve our customers' travel experience and make it more efficient and enjoyable to travel through one of the world's premier international gateways. Our customers should make no mistake that Delta is committed to New York and that this summer's expansion at JFK is an important step in offering enhanced service to customers in most every direction we serve from New York City. ~ Jim Whitehurst

Doctors are crucial choice architects, and with an understanding of how Humans think, they could do far more to improve people's health and thus to lengthen their lives. ~ Richard H. Thaler

But only if I believe that my directing talents will improve the material I'd be working on. I want to make sure I don't sacrifice beautiful material on the altar of my direction. ~ Andre Braugher

I used photography to distance myself from a world that I loathed and was powerless to improve. ~ Lewis Baltz

A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him. ~ Nathaniel Branden

There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people's lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth. ~ Margaret Thatcher

In my view, it is important that our national government exercise leadership to improve the resiliency of the entire nation in the face of continuing extreme weather. ~ Matt Cartwright

Arianna, your performance will actually improve if you can commit to not only working hard, but also unplugging, recharging and renewing yourself. ~ Arianna Huffington

Paul Theroux on Blogging, Travel Writing, and Three Cups of Tea

Speaking of books that contain an element of travel, Greg Mortenson's bestseller about Central Asia was in the news recently. Were you surprised by the allegations that Three Cups of Tea contained fabrications?

No, I wasn't. One of the things The Tao of Travel shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them. For example, everyone loved John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley. Turns out he didn't travel alone, his wife kept meeting him, yet she was never mentioned in the book. Steinbeck didn't go to all the places he mentioned, nor did he meet all the people he said he met. In other words, Travels With Charley is fiction, or at least half-fiction. As for Three Cups of Tea, I think that philanthropists and humanitarians are even less forthcoming about what they do. I guess this guy did build a couple of schools in Afghanistan, but a self-promoting humanitarian is not someone I have a great deal of trust or belief in. I lived for six years in Africa and I've been to Africa numerous times since then. People build schools for their own reasons - not to improve a country.

The people I've known who've done great things of that type - you know, building hospitals, running schools - are very humble people. They give their lives to the project. Mi ~ Paul Theroux

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favor of it, But why not begin on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable than trying to improve others - yes, and a lot less dangerous. ~ Dale Carnegie

While some select sobering situations may be unlaughable, there are few circumstances that humor, subtle or candid, can't improve. Afterall, remembering not to take ourselves or others too seriously can put a lot of things into perspective. Laughter is healing. Laughter creates bonds and forges enduring friendships. A healthy sense of humor can quell almost any overwhelming anxiety, and can quench the fires of fury and fear unlike anything else when appropriate. Even more so when not.
Connie Kerbs ~ Connie Kerbs

It's often the case that teams working in agile processes do not actually go back to improve the user interface of the software. But, as the saying goes, "it's not iterative if you only do it once." Teams need to make a commitment to continuous improvement, and that means not simply refactoring code and addressing technical debt but also reworking and improving user interfaces. Teams must embrace the concept of UX debt and make a commitment to continuous improvement of the user experience. ~ Jeff Gothelf

We need to make sure we have the best people we can in our operations, and that is a constant challenge. There is always room to improve. ~ James Packer

If you want to make yourself more sensitive to the small details in your work, cultivate a habit of imagining, as specifically as possible, what you expect to see and do when you get to your desk. Then you'll be prone to notice the tiny ways in which real life deviates from the narrative inside your head. If you want to become better at listening to your children, tell yourself stories about what they said to you at dinnertime last night. Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you'll encode those experiences deeper in your brain. If you need to improve your focus and learn to avoid distractions, take a moment to visualize, with as much detail as possible, what you are about to do. It is easier to know what's ahead when there's a well-rounded script inside your head. ~ Charles Duhigg

If we are striving, if we are working, if we are trying, to the best of our ability, to improve day by day, then we are in the line of our duty. ~ Heber J. Grant

The best way to improve the American workforce in the 21st century is to invest in early childhood education, to ensure that even the most disadvantaged children have the opportunity to succeed along side their more advantaged peers ~ James Heckman

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind. ~ Abraham Lincoln

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve. ~ Alexander Smith

Systems awareness and systems design are important for health professionals, but they are not enough. They are enabling mechanisms only. It is the ethical dimensions of individuals that are essential to a system's success. Ultimately, the secret of quality is love. You have to love your patient, you have to love your profession, you have to love your God. If you have love, you can then work backward to monitor and improve the system. ~ Avedis Donabedian

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If you want to improve your life and the lives of those around you, you must take action. ~ Tom Rath

Also, I have duct tape. Ordinary duct tape, like you buy at a hardware store. Turns out even NASA can't improve on duct tape. ~ Andy Weir

Accept corrections and you'll improve and increase. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Give recognition where it is due. Compliments stimulate more effort and desire to improve. Be generous with honest praising. ~ Bruce Lee

People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: A quiet conscience mades one strong! ~ Anne Frank

The stands are packed every weekend, year after year, even though the team's achievements have collapsed in line with the town's economy. And perhaps that's why - because everyone hopes than when the team's fortunes improve again, the rest of the town will get pulled up with it. Which is why places like this always have to pin their hopes for the future on young people. They're the only ones who don't remember that things actually used to be better. ~ Fredrik Backman

Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [ ... ] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

a management practice is a good practice when: It engages people and their interactions; It enables them to improve the system; It helps to delight all clients. ~ Jurgen Appelo

You can't change your beliefs as an act of will, in the way you can decide to improve your skills with chainsaw or keyboard. ~ Daniel C. Dennett

Any good thing will be ruined by talking negatively about it; similarly bad thing will improve by speaking positive about it. ~ Dada Bhagwan

Whether we're the largest, smallest, most or least significant thing in the universe makes for a marvelous late-night discussion. It's not relevant to how we live in the here and now. We need to look around, take measure of ourselves, and decide what we can do and how much of it we do to improve our lives and the lives of as many others as we can reach. ~ Nikki Stern

Your understanding of what you read and hear is, to a very large degree, determined by your vocabulary, so improve your vocabulary daily. ~ Zig Ziglar

I think we all need to learn to like ourselves-just the way we are. And if there are moderate ways to improve our looks and if we're doing it for the right reasons (not to impress our friends!), then maybe it's just fine. Beauty is very subjective-meaning that it all depends on your personal taste. I think that's why God made us all different. So instead of turning ourselves into cookie-cutter images of the latest fashion icon, why not take a moment to enjoy our differences? ~ Melody Carlson

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces And Feelings To Improve Communication And Emotional Life. ~ Paul Ekman

E. B. White once wrote, I can't decide whether to enjoy the world or improve the world; that makes it difficult to plan the day. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Don't they teach y'all anythin' in school these days?"

She frowned. Apparently they needed to improve the current How To Survive The Zombie Apocalypse 101 courses. ~ Amy Cook

I think no matter what you look like, the key is to first of all be happy with yourself. And then you know if you want to try to improve things that you don't like about yourself, then do it after your appreciate yourself. ~ Adele

One overly simplistic idea is that we can improve student performance by just by giving financial incentives to parents, teachers, or kids. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that such incentives are effective, but nuances matter. ~ Richard H. Thaler

If you improve or tinker with something long enough, eventually it will break or malfunction. ~ Arthur Bloch

Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom, nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel ("We inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy, our own casualties being very light") and Cato's revolting incitements to war. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else. It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth; and I feel it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled in was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood baths. Like the Soviet Empire, the Roman Empire enslaved peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art treasures, abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which the Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on. No wonder, then, that Rome was filled with great works of art. But the light of culture which Rome is supposed to have emanated was a borrowed light: borrowed from the Greeks and the other peoples that the Roman militarists had enslaved. ~ Petr Beckmann

Done right, a performance review is one of the best opportunities to encourage and support high performers and constructively improve your middle- and lower-tier workers. ~ Kathryn Minshew

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will ... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. ~ William James

Everything you do to improve your physical well-being will have a positive impact on how good you feel about yourself. ~ Brian Tracy

What Mogo did was to take ultimate action to improve his quality of life. This is at the root of murder. We kill people to make our own lives better. We kill them because they are obstacles to our desires, because they make us unhappy, because they burden us, or because they keep calling us fucking wizards. Murder increases happiness. ~ Warren Ellis

Companies are starting to measure how effective their customer service is and trying to understand what they can do to improve the customer service process. ~ Sanjay Kumar

All over the world, we're seeing access to food, clean water, education and healthcare improve; as a result, global innovation is rising as well. ~ Peter Diamandis

When consumers tried to improve their health by shifting to skim milk, Congress set up a scheme for the powerful dairy industry through which it has quietly turned all that unwanted, surplus fat into huge sales of cheese - not cheese to be eaten before or after dinner as a delicacy, but cheese that is slipped into our food as an alluring but unnecessary extra ingredient. The toll, thirty years later: The average American now consumes as much as thirty-three pounds of cheese a year. ~ Michael Moss

Remember, when you change your inner world - your life - then your outer world - your life situation - will improve in parallel. ~ Hal Elrod

Ninety to ninety-five percent of people will withdraw to the comfort zone when what they try doesn't work. Only that small percentage, 5 or 10 percent, will continually improve themselves; they will continually push themselves out into the zone of discomfort, and these are always the highest performers in every field. ~ Brian Tracy

There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. ~ Sam Harris

Improve writing skills: 1. Keep paragraphs short. 2. Use bold and CAPS to make points. 3. Start with a question or short statement. 4. Give me meat in the middle. All meat. 5. Make me smile, think, or act at the end. ~ Jeffrey Gitomer

The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy. ~ Elliott Abrams

When these barriers are broken and opportunities open up, they not only lift women out of poverty; they can elevate women to equality with men in every culture and every level of society. No other single change can do more to improve the state of the world. ~ Melinda Gates

The Ad♥rkable Manifesto

1. We have nothing to declare but our dorkiness.
2. Jumble sales are our shopping malls.
3. Better to make cookies than be a cookie-cutter.
4. Suffering doesn't necessarily improve you but it does give you something to blog about.
5. Experiment with Photoshop, hair dye, nail polish and cupcake flavours but never drugs.
6. Don't follow leaders, be one.
7. Necessity is the mother of customisation.
8. Puppies make everything better.
9. Quiet girls rarely make history.
10. Never shield your oddness, but wear your oddness like a shield. ~ Sarra Manning

You can always borrow ideas; but unless you improve them very significantly, never behave as if they are your own! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I was raised to believe that we all have a civic duty and a responsibility as Americans to improve our neighborhoods and our nation. ~ Paul Cook

Here's the three-ingredient recipe for a glorious day: think a higher thought, move your feet forward, serve someone you've never served. Do those three things and your life will improve in a millisecond. ~ Toni Sorenson

Design is ... above all an effort to improve reality ... I always try to begin with considerations of its function ... I ask myself, who needs it, which materials best suit its functions and so on ... ~ Gianfranco Frattini

While personal income in the U.S. more than doubled between i 96o and the 19gos in constant dollars, the proportion of people saying they are very happy remained a steady 30 percent. One conclusion that the findings seem to justify is that beyond the threshold of poverty, additional resources do not appreciably improve the chances of being happy. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The doctors and nurses at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital are saving lives every day and helping improve health care in the DRC which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war and disease. ~ Dikembe Mutombo