Quotes About Flexibility

That taught me a lesson I've always found it useful to remember if I have to deal with difficult men. When they are hard, they are probably dealing with things they do not understand. If one brings them back to what is familiar to them, they become soft.

Time flies, but if I am willing to fly with it, then I can be airborne, too.

Du musst keine schwierigen Wege mehr suchen, sagte ich mir, um an deine Grenzen zu kommen. Auch wenn du keine senkrechten Felswände mehr hochgehen kannst, geh deinen Weg weiter. Die Welt also war nicht mehr dieselbe. Hatte ich aber meine Erfolge nicht auch der Kunst der Anpassung zu verdanken gehabt? Immer im Leben, wenn es kein Weiter zu geben schien, war die Wende gekommen. Oft unverhofft.

I don't want to know where Semco is headed. It doesn't unnerve me to see nothing on the company's horizon. I want Semco and its employees to ramble through their days, to use instinct, opportunity, and ingenuity to choose projects and ventures.

Advertisements with Semco's name at the top ran in several newspapers asking for résumés via e-mail. Four hundred people replied. There were no rules for narrowing down the respondents. We didn't want a list of requirements to limit our options, so the idea was to make the process highly intuitive and to follow our gut reactions.

Semco adds yet another dimension. You receive a voucher for work after your retirement. So if you took off a hundred Wednesday afternoons, you are now entitled to redeem the vouchers after your retirement by showing up with them and saying, "I'd now like to redeem my vouchers to work one Wednesday a week for two years and receive proportional pay." You've effectively exchanged early retirement for later work.

Our constitution is of course not written; it just conceptually encompasses the basic values and culture that are currently in place (and that change with time).

NEVER MIND THE CHEESE —who moved my weekend?

I am compliance itself—when I am not thwarted;—no one more easily led—when I have my own way.

Change the things that can be changed, accept those that cannot, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

Accepting people's quirks or flaws doesn't just take changing them off your to-do list—it also gives you the time and energy to change the things you can.

The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be.

Do I want to be 'right'—or do I want to be happy?

It is all too easy to mistake passion that can change its mind for fundamentalism, which never will.

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that 'God is the ultimate' or 'God is our better nature' or 'God is the universe.' Of course, like any other word, the word 'God' can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal.

Always devise your rules as if you didn't know whether you were going be at the top or the bottom of the pecking order.

The only people who believe in straight roads are generals & mail coach drivers.

Porque no hay una forma adecuada de planificar la vida ni tampoco de vivirla: sólo un montón de formas inadecuadas.

My greatest human flaw and strength, not surprisingly, is that I can always imagine anything—a marriage, a conversation, a government—as being different from how it is, a trait that might make one a top-notch trial lawyer or novelist or realtor, but that also seems to produce a somewhat less than reliable and morally feasible human being.)

So to put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible.

In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.

Wardani had donned the emotional equivalent of a vacuum suit, the only response left in the human armory when the moral parameters of the outside environment have grown so outrageously variable that an exposed mind can no longer survive unshielded.

Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough.