Quote Unquote

There is something about quotes that makes them a favoured output of development gurus and coaches.  They contain highly contagious messages with a pithy ‘bumper sticker’ appeal that makes them perfect for the Twitter-fest of quotes that whizz past on my Twitter feed. One of the most influential quotes that I have come across and that keeps me ‘on mission’ at Poppyfish is this one:

 "Success does not happen by spontaneous combustion, you must first set yourself on fire"

I love the idea this paints. For me it sums up what Poppyfish is all about. Until today though I had no idea of the origin of the quote, it being just something that I’d carried in my head over the past few years.

I found out this morning that this quote should be sourced to a chap by the name of Arnold H Glasow.

Googling Mr Glasow doesn’t really enrich our understanding of him, the extent of my knowledge coming from the following:

"Arnold Henry Glasow was born in Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, USA, in 1905, and died in Freeport, Illinois in 1998 age 93. He graduated from Ripon College, and started his own business when he moved to Freeport just after the Great Depression. His business was a humour magazine that he marketed to firms nationally, which firms would turn into their own "House Organ" to send to their own customers. He ran this business for over sixty years but didn't publish his first book until aged 92. The book was titled "Glasow's Gloombusters", one of the many titles he put to his work during his career. He was cited frequently in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Chicago Tribune and many other major publications. He was a regular contributor to the humour sections of Reader's Digest. Sixty years of productive work. Many accolades. A real American thinker, self-effacing and generous of spirit, he shunned the national spotlight".

More?

Here's a few more of Glasow’s quotes (from Mistral again). Some of them are really top drawer. Pick your own favourite and make no mistake, you’ll be seeing some of these again!

"A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down".

"All some folks want is their fair share and yours".

"An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied".

"Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope".

"Improvement begins with I".

"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects".

"Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to".

"Nothing lasts forever - not even your troubles".

"One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency".

"Praise does wonders for our sense of hearing".

"Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time".

"Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a bath".

"The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion".

"The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it".

"The trouble with the future is that it usually arrives before we're ready for it"

"What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions".

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