The 20 most insightful things I have read

I’ve always loved words. I particularly like the way you can make subtle changes in the way you twine them together and suddenly they are lifting off the page and rattling your emotional senses in ways you hadn’t imagined.

Sometimes you discover passages that open a thought pattern and unlock a universal truth that alters your perspective on an issue or even modifies the manner in which you live or work.

When I read these types of insights, I write them down and keep them. Here are 20 from that collection.

1. “For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use being anything else.” – Winston Churchill

2. "If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. Too many of us think (peace) is impossible. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable - that mankind is doomed - that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made - therefore, they can be solved by man.” - President John F Kennedy

3. “What other people think of you is none of your business.” - Deepak Chopra

4. “Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." – A five-year-old kid called Bobby from a survey of American children on their understanding of love.

5. “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

6. A couple from Jewel Kilcher: “Nature has a way of breaking what does not bend,” and “Everything is temporary if you give it enough time.”

7. “Don’t get too excited about work. If work was fabulous the rich would have hogged the jobs long ago.” – Sylvia Bradshaw

8. “Nobody ever said on their death bed – ‘I wish I spent more time at the office’,” and “Life is not a dress rehearsal.”

9. A few from Mark Brownley :

• You can’t cut your way to success – only grow there
• You only need 80% of the answer to succeed
• Only do business with people you like

10. “Appoint someone who can do the job, not someone who has done it.”

11. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” – George Bernard Shaw

12. “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” - Stephen Covey

13. “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature – life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller

14. “Kill off bad ideas, even when they are yours.” - Jack Welch

15. “If you really value your staff don’t wait for them to come to you with a concern. Really take notice of how they are going. See the unseen and hear the unsaid.” - Stefan

16. “Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.” - Charles Schultz

17. Don’t always think you need more people, more money and more time. Think about what you can stop doing to do the more important things. - Richard Koch and “Hire well, manage little."

18. “For every problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong.” - H. L. Mencken

19. “What power does a particular person have over you? What harm can they do? What threat can they pose? Let them do their worst. Even if their worst is as bad as you fear (which it isn't) you will be perfectly safe. Others are not as gullible as you may imagine. You have more friends, supporters and influential admirers than you realise. The only way in which you can incur damage now is if you make yourself more vulnerable than you need to be by somehow imagining your defences to be weaker than they truly are.” - Unknown

20. And finally a few from Jim Collins in “Good to Great”:

• Great leaders tend to look outside of themselves to apportion credit but apportion responsibility to themselves. They never blame bad luck when things don’t go well.
• Money is not a way to get changed behaviours out of your people – it is a way to get the right people.
• If you hire the right people they will be engaged and will engage each other. You won’t need to do it.
• Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
• Create a climate where the truth can be heard and the brutal facts confronted.
• Great companies are like hedgehogs – simple dowdy creatures that do one thing very well and stick to it

Shane Rodgers is a business executive, writer and marketer. He is the author of Tall People Don’t Jump – the curious behaviour of human beings. Comments in these posts are personal.