Ok all -
I am working on collecting inspirational quotes to place around our build site this year. I’d love your help. What quotes inspire you?
It’s not really a quote, but I guess you could take part of it.
Here’s an incomplete list of the quotes that go at the bottom of each our team’s blog posts.
Here are a couple I believe students should understand, and that pertain to particular skills students should have. However, they may not be entirely appropriate for your list.
We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
–George S. Patton
I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.
–Confucius
Champions are champions not because they do anything extraordinary but because they do the ordinary things better than anyone else.
—Chuck Knoll
Actually, if you want a quick list of FIRST quotes (from CD) look at http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/spotlightlist.php?. Another good source of quotes are poster’s signatures…
One of my favorites lately has been:
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success”
-Nikola Tesla
The Nike video Gabriel linked to was great! It also led to this video “Steve Jobs explains the rules for success”. I see a lot of what Steve talks about when I look around FIRST.
The one I say lots during the build process is
"Hope is not an engineering strategy"
You can modify it at will to be “design”, “game play”, “shipping”, “programming”, “project management”, “lunch”, etc.
One that I frequently use:
“Success in this game comes from a wealth of ideas and good engineering, not deep pockets.”- Karthik Kanagasabapathy (Team 1114 & Innovation First Inc.)
Leadership
Leaders are like eagles: We don’t have them here.
From Here. Be sure to look at the posters for “motivation” and “adaptation”. :ahh:
heres a quote i found from the founder of FIRST::safety::
I don’t work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people.
Dean Kamen
“Due to a shortage of robots, our workers are human and may react unpredictably when abused.”
Try Leonardo da Vinci… He has plenty of good quotes.
For example, “The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” - R. W. Emerson
(That is also a favorite of Karthik’s.)
Also, dunno who said this one, but:
“Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but you don’t know why. On our team, theory and practice comes together. Nothing works and nobody knows why.”
One of my favorite quotes:
“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” -Vince Lombardi
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
-Anonymous
But more seriously, all four of Karthik’s favorite quotes are lovely.
One particular line caught favor in the Columbia area in recent years.
I’ve also been known to steal occasionally from wrestler (and Gamecock fan) Ric Flair. Not that I would use all of his material around here, but this one works nicely when going up against tough competition. I tried to transcribe the whole thing, but it’s hard to capture the fullness of Flair’s delivery. As such, I’ll just take the most-remembered line: to be the man, you gotta beat the man. Lots of teams go into an event thinking they’re the man (I’ve been guilty of it too) but a full realization of where the man actually is you realize just how hard you’ll have to work to leave with the gold around your waist.
Which brings me to another quote from boxer Joe Louis: “Everyone has a plan until they’ve been hit.”
Destination: Einstein
is what I’m going with now.
It should be good for several years.
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“only when you start to believe that you can win, will you begin to win.” Gary Somo
oh and “You can’t coast uphill!” me