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41 " Immerse yourself in good books. Read one to two hours per week if you can, more if time permits. Become acquainted with the literary classics. Read as much as you can on personal improvement (self help), history, people, business, and finances. Study the great works of the philosophers. Study scriptures and read about religions and anything that adds value to religious beliefs. Invest in yourself! Learn as much as you can and become a student of life. You can learn a great deal from the experiences of others, from their great successes and also from their failures. Everything you read becomes part of you. Carefully choose what you read on a daily basis. Be very careful with what you choose to read. The words you choose to read play an important role in your personal development and overall outlook on life. Be open-minded about what you read and often take what you read with a grain of salt. Much of what we read is written through colored lenses and is the summation of someone else’s thought, habit, education, beliefs, and past and present life experiences. "
42 " That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, 'This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children.' Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. 'What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy. "
― Bertrand Russell , Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
43 " Education develops the intellect; and the intellect distinguishes man from other creatures. It is education that enables man to harness nature and utilize her resources for the well-being and improvement of his life. The key for the betterment and completeness of modern living is education. But, ' Man cannot live by bread alone '. Man, after all, is also composed of intellect and soul. Therefore, education in general, and higher education in particular, must aim to provide, beyond the physical, food for the intellect and soul. That education which ignores man's intrinsic nature, and neglects his intellect and reasoning power can not be considered true education. "
― Haile Selassie I
44 " Acceptance" is a very important word in our lives. People drive themselves into madness and death thinking about the chasm that exists between their ideals and their actual reality that they are living. There must be a balance between improvement of one's self and one's circumstances and the acceptance of reality. There is a beautiful dance that one must learn, which involves embracing the reality of your life as you would embrace a Latin dance partner on the ballroom floor, and moving that partner (your reality) in graceful strides, towards where you want to be situated, on that dance floor. If you dance with no partner (your current reality), you will arrive at your destination empty. Empty. That is, if you ever arrive at all. But when you dance with that partner, embracing and accepting it for all of its flaws and its redeeming qualities, you will be able to move across that dance floor as a full, whole person. Wherever you end up stopping in that ballroom, you will stop there as a whole person, not an empty one. So, accept the mistakes that have been done unto you and the mistakes that you have done. Accept the fact that you didn't grow up perfectly and you are not perfect now. Accept, embrace, love the people who are given to you to love. And love yourself just as you are. "
45 " I write fiction" " What’s fiction?" " Fiction is an improvement on life. "
46 " Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains that the other half can soar into skies? "
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
47 " I wou'd therefore exhort all my sex (...) to betake themselves to the improvement of their minds (...) and (...) shew our selves worthy something from them, as much above their bare esteem, as they conceit themselves above us. In a word, let us shew them, by what little we do without aid of education, the much we might do if they did us justice; that we may force a blush from them, if possible, and compel them to confess their own baseness to us, and that the worst of us deserve much better treatment than the best of us receive. "
― Sophia Fermor , Woman Not Inferior to Man
48 " The sufferings which may be observed nowadays - they are so widespread and so vast - but people speak nevertheless about a certain moral improvement which society has achieved… "
49 " Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life,the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. "
― Joseph Campbell , A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
50 " Trying to fix the shortcoming of others while ignoring your own flaws results in little if no improvement―not to mention bitter feelings. Concentrating on personal growth sets a good example and results in the improvement of one life if not more. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year
51 " Self improvement can be very challenging, but where there's a will, there's a way. Make your own way! "
― Melica Niccole
52 " One major way to avoid shifting blames unto other people is to accept and agree that the efforts that turn the loads of your self- improvement have to turn on your own pivot. "
― Israelmore Ayivor , The Great Hand Book of Quotes
53 " Your " Self" was created in the image and likeness of your creator. How can you believe that your " self" can be improved? Self improvement is contradictory to your creation. "
54 " The quest for self improvement and personal growth is now an integral part of my life. I’m always looking for ways to increase my capacity to grow, develop and achieve more.And that means, I’m willing to read, observe, listen, discuss, research and do whatever it takes to become a better improved me. I hope you are too. "
55 " Telephone did not come into existence from the persistent improvement of the postcard. "
― Amit Kalantri ,
56 " Like everyone on the planet, one identifies and looks toward a vision of improvement or refinement, but/and one has to find a way to engage both of those—what is so, and what can be—with an appropriate harmony that is itself the hallmark of wholeness. In essence, we are looking to create a harmony between the existing elements, not a more severe dichotomy between what we want and what we should be doing. "
― Darrell Calkins , Re:
57 " Very few managers know how to effectively tap the biggest source of performance improvement available to them: namely, the creativity and knowledge of the people who work for them. "
― Alan G. Robinson , The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas
58 " The most obvious and the most distinctive features of the History of Civilisation, during the last fifty years, is the wonderful increase of industrial production by the application of machinery, the improvement of old technical processes and the invention of new ones, accompanied by an even more remarkable development of old and new means of locomotion and intercommunication. By this rapid and vast multiplication of the commodities and conveniences of existence, the general standard of comfort has been raised, the ravages of pestilence and famine have been checked, and the natural obstacles, which time and space offer to mutual intercourse, have been reduced in a manner, and to an extent, unknown to former ages. The diminution or removal of local ignorance and prejudice, the creation of common interests among the most widely separated peoples, and the strengthening of the forces of the organisation of the commonwealth against those of political or social anarchy, thus effected, have exerted an influence on the present and future fortunes of mankind the full significance of which may be divined, but cannot, as yet, be estimated at its full value. "
― Thomas Henry Huxley , The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century
59 " Excellence is a habit acquired by continuous improvement on the little things you do with a firm belief that it's going to be better than before! "
60 " The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought 'dogmatic,' for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought " dogmatic" to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic. "