Continuous effort--not strength
or intelligence--is the key to
unlocking our potential.

Winston Churchill

   

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential.  Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.

Pope John XXIII


You can count the seeds in the apple, but not the apples in the seed.

Ken Kersey

      

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Jesus of Nazareth

  

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression.  There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye.  The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak.  Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it.  How we value it.  If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself.

Rachel Naomi Remen

   

When nothing is sure, everything is possible.

Margaret Drabble

  

We fear our highest possibilities.  We are generally afraid
to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments,
under the most perfect conditions, under conditions of great courage.

Abraham Maslow

  

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With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence
in one's ability, one can build a better world.

The Dalai Lama

   

Nothing is too great or too good to be true.  Do not believe that
we can imagine things better than they are.  In the long run, in
the ultimate outlook, in the eye of the Creator, the possibilities of
existence, the possibilities open to us, are beyond our imagination.

Joseph Wood Krutch

  

Never underestimate the power of dreams and the influence
of the human spirit. We are all the same in this notion:
The potential for greatness lives within each of us.

Wilma Rudolph

  

   

Everyone has inside of him or her a piece of good news.  The good news
is that you don't know how great you can be!  How much you can
love!  What you can accomplish!  And what your potential is!


Anne Frank

  

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a
very restricted circle of their potential being. They make very small
use of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in
general, much like a person who, out of his or her whole bodily
organism, should get into a habit of using and
moving only his or her little finger.

William James

  
The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential.
When you do what you do best, you are helping
not only yourself, but the world.

Roger Williams
   

No matter what the level of your ability, you have
more potential than you can ever develop in a lifetime.

James T. Mccay

   

The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new
continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be
released and channeled toward some great good.

Brian Tracy

  

  

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be
and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

   

There are admirable potentialities in every human being.  Believe in
your strength and your truth.  Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself.
"It all depends on me."

Andre Gide

  

To be what we are, and to
become what we are capable of
becoming is the only end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

    

There's no telling what's inside each person that we meet,
no telling the potential that each person has for growth
and for doing exceptional things.  Just like the apple seed,
though, our potential is realized by creating just the right
conditions for our growth and development.  Just as the
apple cannot thrive in dry, barren climes, so is it difficult
for us to thrive in situations that are not fitting.

tom walsh

   

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It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has
oneself prevented from becoming realities.  A possibility is a hint from
God.  One must follow it.

Soren Kierkegaard
   

From the seed grows a root, then a sprout; from the sprout, the
seedling leaves; from the leaves, the stem; around the stem, the
branches; at the top, the flower. . . We cannot say that the seed
causes the growth, nor that the soil does.  We can say that the
potentialities for growth lie within the seed, in mysterious life
forces, which, when properly fostered, take on certain forms.

M.C. Richards
Centering

    
    

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what
might not the heart of a human become in its long journey toward the stars?

G.K. Chesterton

  

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The future is simply infinite possibility waiting to happen.  What it waits
on is human imagination to crystallize its possibility.

Leland Kaiser

   

Most of us can learn to live in perfect comfort on higher levels
of power.  Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies
slumbering in him or her which the incitements of that day do not call
forth.  Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half-awake.
It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that
are ordinarily not called upon, deeper and deeper strata of explosible
material, ready for use by anyone who probes so deep.  The human
individual usually lives far within his or her limits.

William James

   

Our being is subject to all the chances of life.  There are so many things
we are capable of, that we could be or do.  The potentialities are so great
that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Katherine Anne Porter

   

  

   

Ehrlich smiled.  “Precisely.  Most people sit around, doing the same things over and over, waiting for some sort of catalyst to come along and turn them into fulfillment of their potential.  They don’t understand that the catalyst rarely just comes to them—they must go out in search of it, and they must actively try to find it.

“And many people, as soon as they find that catalyst, they try very hard to put out the flame, because they’re afraid of what’s going to happen when the flame engulfs them completely.  They have the opportunity to reach fulfillment of their potential, yet they shy away from allowing that potential to break free.  They want complete control over the fulfillment of their potential, not realizing that it’s only in the letting go of the control that they can ever find the fulfillment.

“Still others, sadly, spend their entire lives running from the flame, never letting it touch them, for their fear is so strong that they cannot live fully.  They spend their lives in darkness, fearing the illumination of the flame that would allow them to see through the darkness that they choose for themselves."

tom walsh
A Lesson on Potential

  
    
The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a new
continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and
channeled toward some great good.

Brian Tracy
   

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power,
but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever
young and ardent, sees the possible. . . what wine is so sparkling,
so fragrant, so intoxicating, as possibility!

Søren Kierkegaard

  

We have to get children to understand that not only do they have
this incredible uniqueness, but they also have something that
sometimes we forget about.  They are also potentiality.  They are
much more undiscovered than they are discovered.  And there's the
wonder of it.  It doesn't matter where they are, they're only just
beginning and the big magical trip of life is digging
it all out and discovering the wonderful you.


Leo Buscaglia

   
The difference between what we do and what we are capable
of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

Mohandas Gandhi
  

        
    

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.