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Conservatives Are From Mars, Liberals Are From San Francisco
by Burt Prelutsky
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America Alone
by Mark Steyn
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Wheel of Fortune
Lessons Learned the Hard Way by a Middle-Aged Business Innovator
[Michael Levine] 3/28/06

Successful people are very lucky. Just ask any failure.
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Expecting nothing bad to happen to you because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you’re a vegetarian.
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Often, people who don’t work are more exhausted than people who do.
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The uncreative mind can spot the wrong answer, but it takes a creative mind to spot the wrong question.

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With the death of Communism, why aren’t more people celebrating the triumph of capitalism?
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Honesty, confidence, and talent to inspire are the values at the core of effective leadership.
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It is only the strongest leaders who have the confidence to employ the most qualified people possible, without fear of being overshadowed.
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Any job can be made great. It’s the worker ---- not the work ----- that counts.
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The most successful cultures regard private business ownership almost as moral obligation.
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It’s better to be 0 for 20 than 0 for 0.
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Balancing your budget is like protecting your virtue. You have to learn to say No.
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The first rule of money management is knowing what you’ve got. The second is knowing what what you want.
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Successful people demonstrate consistency between words and actions. * Happiness tends to drop in unexpectedly when you are working hard on something meaningful. * Business owners should remember that old customers spend more, refer new customers, and cost less to do business with than new customers.
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Some people’s economic view is more animated by a desire to hurt the wealthy than it is to help the poor.
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It doesn’t surprise me that hyperactive children are four times more likely than their peers to grow up and start a business.
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Businesses should hire for attitude and train for skill. It’s easier to teach someone how to work a cash register than it is to teach them how to smile.
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Telling champions to give up is like telling water to run upstream.
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You know you’re doing something right when you start being copied.
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A pessimist is someone who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
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The job of a manager is not to do everything -- it is to make sure that every task gets done.
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What hurts most businesses is a lack of fortitude.
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What self-help books and business manuals have in common is the importance of defining aspirations.
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Recognition for a job well done is the top motivator for employee performance.
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Whenever a car dealership’s service department is not open at least some hours on nights and weekends, I know the dealership doesn’t care a shred about customer service.
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Asking those who are involved in a life of chaos to be respectful of your time is like catching flies with chopsticks.
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All plans need foundations, and the foundations are simple truths.
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I’m all for working hard, damn hard, but there’s something wrong, damn wrong, with people that always look frantic and preoccupied at the office.
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You can’t climb the ladder of success without first getting on the ladder.
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Good news: every year, every week, even every day, we get to begin our world all over again.
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Repetition is a prerequisite for change and success.
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Great leaders aren’t afraid of great conflicts.
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Hard work vaccinates against both boredom and poverty.
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Don’t forget that Edison invented the lightbulb on roughly his ten thousandth attempt.
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At one time in our history, the model was: Human beings walk, birds fly. The Wright Brothers ignored the model.
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Creative solutions can only arise from failures.
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The true goal of running a company is to make venture-taking feasible. Management cannot force its employees to be inventive -- it can only furnish circumstances under which ingenuity thrives.
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Sitting through some unproductive business meetings feels as uncomfortable as wearing shoes a size too small.
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The most important factor in deciding if a society will succeed is the ethics of the civilians, not the actions of the leaders.
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Truck drivers‚ wages aren’t very high when there are no trucks around to drive.
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The biggest mistake people make when it comes to saving for retirement is thinking they don’t have to do it on their own.
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There’s a big difference between a job and a career.
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Most people are not idealogues - -they are attracted to what works.
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As a leader, you must constantly change the definition of winning. Keep moving the goal posts.
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Most people I know have a heart, a mind, and, hopefully, a conscience. So, presumably, should the companies they work for.
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In business negotiations, I assume the best of the person I’m disagreeing with.
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To some degree, you control your life by controlling your time.
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I believe that people who work twelve hours a day should go home with bigger loaves of bread than people who work eight.
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We are all salespeople.
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When you think you’ve gotten something for nothing, you just haven’t received the bill yet.
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Imagine applying for your current job. This exercise can stir up innovative thoughts about your work and how you do it.
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The only job security in the world is to be more talented tomorrow than you are today.
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Every leader of every corporation ought to go out and get a couple of the best books on psychology and read them.
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The divine mission of very large companies is simple but not easy: to instill in themselves the heart and soul of a small company.
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If your work doesn’t provide the opportunity for spiritual, personal, and financial growth, you’re spending far too much of your life on it.
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I love the idea of people bartering goods and services without cash. I don’t understand why more people don’t do it.
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Doctors that make you wait more than half an hour to be seen without an explanation should be sent a bill for your wasted time.
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In terms of choosing a career, the trick is to find a job that you would do for free if life afforded you that opportunity.
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We’re reaching a point in America where the value of time is beginning to equal the value of money.
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I’ve observed that people like free markets as long as the economy is booming. As soon as the inevitable fluctuations occur, everyone complains bitterly and expects the government to step in immediately and remedy things. So, people want the energy and success of capitalism, but the safety of socialism. An impossible wish.
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One of the rules for success in the workplace is to show up 10 percent earlier than the appointed time and stay 10 percent after the closing time.
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Governing a company is like tending a garden -- from time to time you need to just get out there and do some weeding.
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Nothing vaccinates against anarchy like a well-structured schedule.
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Lying fallow or chasing one’s tail does to the human being exactly what I suspected -- bring them down. Doers are happier than non-doers. Period.
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I don’t know of any public figure who will not brag about having been poor in their youth. They wear their rags-to-riches stories like a Congressional Medal of Honor. With each telling, the road to school gets longer and bumpier, the temperature drops significantly and their lunchbox gets a little emptier. Overcoming adversity is the one thing Americans can resist.
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Many self-made men worship their creator.
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We are making progress. Let’s not forget the smallpox, cholera and tuberculosis have been virtually eliminated.
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In the final analysis, we are our choices.
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When I think of the position taken by some of the academic elite, it reminds me of the sad song, “Send in the Clowns”...”don’t bother, they’re here.”
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Rather than ask what makes nations poor, the more practical approach is to look at what makes them rich.
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Even Chinese communists know the power of the incentives.
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Feeling omniscient, brilliant people can destroy themselves by ignoring risks.
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Relaxing is most necessary when you don’t have time for it.
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Once upon a time, fame was the result of achievement.
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People with winning attitudes win.
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There doesn’t seem to be any excuse for not giving to charity. None. If you can’t afford even a small amount of money, then give them your time.
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Isn’t the definition of a genius someone who’s done some Herculean pushing against the current wisdom that says “you can’t do that.”
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Liberation means having choices; wisdom means understanding the costs.
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You can worry yourself to death.
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Boredom is the shriek of our unused capacity.
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Some people struggle harder to avoid health and sanity than a fish caught on dry land.
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Being able to vote is no more realizing freedom than being able to read is realizing wisdom.
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Attitude is the mother of luck.
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Relearning is harder than learning.
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Turning down the noise in your mind is an acquired skill.
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Remember, underneath people’s exquisite explanations for their problems with food, drugs, or alcohol are far deeper problems for which these symptoms only manifest.
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I was fascinated to read in the British Medical Journal that department store mannequins are so skinny that they probably wouldn’t have enough fat on them to menstruate if they were alive. The brainwash continues.
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To constantly yield to instinctual urges is to give no thought to their consequences. To suppress them is to place too great a weight on them, thus enabling them to rule your life. The key, then, is to find some happy middle ground wherein lies both the knowledge of possible consequences and the power of moderation.
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Isolation only magnifies your worries. Helping others will give you a sense of accomplishment and self- respect and remind you that, relatively speaking, your own troubles don’t amount to a hill of beans in the world.
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Have you ever counted up the number of times the word “genius” is used on award shows in Hollywood? And if all those people are geniuses, what was Einstein?
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The intellectual elites of this country are not only out of touch with mainstream America, but they are violently contemptuous of it.
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There is a big difference between smart and being wise. You can have a very quick mind, which is a good working definition for smart, but act very foolishly. A wise person is much rarer.
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Some ideas are really so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.
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Ideas without plans are like snow in a hot oven.
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Logical consequences are invisible to fools and blinking neon to the wise.
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Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.
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Occasionally, the best answer to a question is a question.
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Today, instead of a plan, hope, or dream, everyone seems to have a scheme.
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Does anyone doubt that the mentally ill are victims not of weak character, but of bad chemistry?
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Building a business is much like building a house. It’s much easier when you have a blueprint.
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Studies have shown that certain kinds of men will die almost immediately after their retirement. This is evidence that work-centered males suffer deeply, when stripped of their life’s meaning.
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If most men spent as much time and attention on their personal financial matters as they do on ball scores, they would find retirement a lot easier.
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Self-made, wealthy accumulators spend far less than they can afford to on houses, cars, vacations, entertainment, etc. Why? Because these things offer little or no financial return. They would rather put their money into investments or their business, so their wealth grows.
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I miss the simpler days when fitness equipment was a machine consisting of a wide, rubber belt attached to a vibrating motor which operated on the principle that if you could shake up your fat in a rhythmic fashion, you could fool it into thinking it had been for a run.
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Life costs more than you expect. -ONE-

Michael Levine is the founder of LCO- Levine Communications Office, a Los Angeles-based public relations firm, and the author of 17 books, including Broken Windows (Warner Books, 2005). www.LCOonline.com

copyright 2005 Michael Levine

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