It is always useful to have a pithy way to get a point across, but how many of us can think that fast? So in the interest of making my readers sound both brilliant and cool here are four “pithyisms” to use at your discretion—with attribution, one would hope.

Oscar Wilde said, “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” Try that on your boss the next time you turn left when he says go right.

Have you wondered why VCs and pundits of all stripes keep telling entrepreneurs and managers that attitude is more important than skills? Ralph Marston has the answer, “Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude.”

It is said that once the genie is out of the bottle he can not be put back; this is especially true of personal growth, or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”

Personal growth is a wonderful thing, but it does require taking risks. However, risks can be mitigated, even when following Mark Twain’s recommendation, “A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”

And remember, it’s always a good idea to

Flickr image credit: quinn.anya

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 1:15 am and is filed under Quotable Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: experience, growth, Mark Twain, pithyism
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