Morning Briefings

When obscurity pollutes someone’s communication, it’s often because the author’s goal is to impress and not to inform. The low road to impressing an audience is to make them feel inferior, by using words they won’t understand.

– Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky
Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter’s Guide

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

– Abraham Lincoln

If your life is free from clingy friends, aggressive employees, hypocritical colleagues, controlling relatives, indecisive coworkers, insensitive bosses or any other descriptions that fall under ‘difficult people’ consider yourself blessed, and extremely rare.

– Les Parrot
High-Maintenance Relationships

You get from people what you expect.

– Ken Blanchard
The Heart of a Leader

I’ve been a Catholic all my life, and there’s one thing I’ve never understood. Why didn’t the Corinthians write back?

– Long-time LA Dodgers Manager Tommy Lasorda
speaking at St. Mary’s High School in Phoenix as Andre Ethier was having his high school number retired

A small person with small ideas won’t lead us to new levels of excellence or an improved quality of life. There are a hundred times more small people than big people in the world. Wherever they are, they do their best to shoot down people with big visions, big dreams and big perspectives. This is sad, because all of us, including the small people, ultimately benefit from the big ideas.

– Kent M. Keith
Anyway–The Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World

Before They Were Titans, Moguls and Newsmakers, These People Were Rejected: At College Admission Time, Lessons in Thin Envelopes

– Sue Shellenbarger
The Wall Street Journal

I’m beat up by the numbers. The pressure to produce is unbelievable. I simply don’t have the time or the resources to do it all.

– Steven R. Covey
The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness

Connecting people to fix the world over time is the deepest spiritual value you can have.

– Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist

Most people don’t realize that they are getting defensive until it’s too late to do much about it. Once they are firmly hooked by their defensive behavior, it is difficult for them to remain effective in a relationship.

– James W. Tamm
Radical Collaboration: Five Essential Skills to Overcome Defensiveness and Build Successful Relationships