Management Insights 

Management Quotes: Managing Adversity

• What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful. --Blaine Lee
• Adversity sometimes is the only diet that will reduce a fat head. --Unknown
• The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity. Margaret J. Wheatley, philosopher
• Adversity is a severe instructor, set over us by one who knows us better than we do ourselves, as he loves us better too.  --Edmund Burke
• Consider the past and you shall know the future. - Chinese Proverb 
• Not to know the past is to be in bondage to it, while to remember, to know, is to be set free.- Dr. Sigmund Freud
• If you are unhappy with your present.. examine (change) you past actions or inactions!  Med Jones
• Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, under prosperous conditions, may have remained dormant. --Horace
• Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory. --George S. Patton 
• Adversity is like the rain of spring. --Chinese Proverb
• Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it. --Horace
• A leaf that is destined to grow large is full of grooves and wrinkles at the start. Now if one has no patience and wants it smooth offhand like a willow leaf, there is trouble ahead. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• All adverse and depressing influences can be overcome, not by fighting, by by rising above them. --Charles Caleb Colton
• All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it. --Samuel Butler
• All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. . . . You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. --Walt Disney
• A man of character finds a special attractiveness in difficulty, since it is only by coming to grips with difficulty that he can realize his potentialities. --Charles de Gaulle
• A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner. --English proverb
• Believe it is possible to solve your problem. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come. It will. --Norman Vincent Peale
• Challenges can be stepping stones or stumbling blocks. It's just a matter of how you view them. --Unknown
• Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart. --Myla Kabat-Zinn
• Every adversity, every failure and every heartache carries with it the Seed of an equivalent or a greater Benefit. -- Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
• Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds. --Norman Vincent Peale
• For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. --Alfred D. Souza
• For man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abadonment and poverty are battefields which have their heroes--obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes. --Victor Hugo
• Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. --William Saroyan
• Great men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war. --Seneca
• He that can heroically endure adversity will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former is not likely to be transported with the later. --Henry Fielding
• If confusion is the first step to knowledge, I must be a genius. --Larry Leissner
• If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane. --Anonymous
• If you don't have something to overcome, you'll be overcome by complacency. --Randall D. Worley
• If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn. --Bernie Siegel, MD
• In adversity, remember to keep an even mind. --Horace
• In every adversity there lies the seed of an equivalent advantage. --Robert Collier
• It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity. --Horace
• It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult. --Seneca
• It is not the greatness of our trouble but the littleness of our spirit that makes us complain. --Jeremy Taylor
• Joy is the will which labors, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph. --William Butler Yeats
• Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. --M. Scott Peck
• Life is hard by the yard, but by the inch, life's a cinch. --Unknown
• Life is made up of marble and mud. --Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Look at every obstacle as an opportunity. --Dr. Wayne Dyer
• Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. --Mary Ellen Kelly
• Never, Never, Never, Never give up. --Winston Churchhill
• No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. --Abraham Lincoln
• No pressure, no diamonds. --Mary Case
• Obstacles across our path can be spiritual flat tires--disruptions in our lives seem to be disastrous at the time, but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way. --Bernie Siegal
• Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your mind off your goals. --Unknown
• Others can stop you temporarily - you are the only one who can do it permanently. --Zig Ziglar
• People who take risks are the people you'll lose against. --John Scully
• Problems are only opportunities with thorns on them. --Hugh Miller - Snow on the Wind (St. Martin's)
• Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles, they toughen and make strong. --Norman Vincent Peale
• Prosperity doth best discover vice but adversity doth best discover virtue. --Francis Bacon
• Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties. --Sarah Ban Breathnach
• Search for the seed of good in every adversity. --Og Mandino
• Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity. --Lou Holtz
• Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better. --Malcolm Forbes
• Somewhere in the world there is defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small, and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory. --John Steinbeck
• The boy who is going to make a great man... must not make up his mind not merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand defeats. --Theodore Roosevelt
• The burden of suffering seems a tombstone hung about our necks, while in reality it is only the weight which is necessary to keep down the diver while he is hunting for pearls. --Richter
• What does not kill me makes me stronger. --Goethe
• We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. --Martin Luther King, Jr.
• What is the difference between an obstacle and an opportunity? Our attitude towards it. Every opportunity has a difficulty, and every difficulty has an opportunity. --J. Sidlo Baxter
• What was hard to bear is sweet to remember. --Portuguese proverb
• Adversity is the foundation of virtue. --Japanese proverb
• You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacle you had to overcome to reach your goals. --Unknown
• We all have inconveniences of one kind or another. How you deal with them ultimately determines how successful you are. --Craig McFarlane
• We come and go just like ripples in a stream. --John V. Politis
• We grow because we struggle, we learn and overcome. --R. C. Allen
• Welcome every problem as an opportunity. Each moment is the greatest challenge. The more difficult the problem, the greater the challenge in working it out. --Grace Speare
• Tough times never last, but tough people do! --Robert Schuller
• True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort. --Walter Anderson - "The Confidence Course: Sevens Steps to Self-Fulfillment"
• The difficulty in life is the choice. --George Moore, The Bending of the Bough, [1900], act IV
• The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired. --Seneca
• The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground.... --Unknown
• The people who are really failures are the people who set their standards so low, keep the bar at such a safe level, that they never run the risk of failure. --Robert Schuller
• The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist, the opportunity in every difficulty. --L.P. Jacks
• The question in life is not whether you get knocked down. You will. The question is, are you ready to get back up... And fight for what you believe in? --Dan Quayle
• There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them. --Phyllis Bottome
• There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. --Henry Kissinger
• There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out. --Lou Reed, "Magic and Loss"
• The true way to soften one's troubles is to solace those of others. --Madame De Maintenon
• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. --Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The worst prison would be a closed heart. --Unknown
• 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. --Alfred Lord Tennyson
• 'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, when life flows like a song. But the man worthwhile is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. --Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. --Unknown
• To err is human, to forgive divine. --Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
• To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. --Bernadette Devlin
• To suffering there is a limit; to fearing, none. (Dolendi modus, timendi non item.) --Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles

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