“Winston Churchill was once asked, ‘Doesn’t it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?’

“‘It’s quite flattering,’ replied Sir Winston. ‘But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big.’”

- Winston Churchill
as quoted by Norman McGowan

“Do not confuse notoriety and fame with greatness. For many of the titled in today’s world obtained their fame and fortunes outside their own merit.

“On the other hand, I have met great people in the most obscure roles in life. For, you see, greatness is a measure of one’s spirit, not a result of one’s rank in human affairs. Nobody, least of all mere humans, confers greatness upon another, for it is not a prize but an achievement. And greatness can crown the head of a janitor just as readily as it can come to someone of high rank.”

- Sherman G. Finesilver

Sherman Glenn Finesilver (1927 – 2006) was a United States federal judge.

“John Milton was a failure. In writing Paradise Lost, his aim was to ‘justify the ways of God to men.’ Inevitably, he fell short and wrote only a monumental poem. Beethoven, whose music was conceived to transcend fate, was a failure, as was Socrates, whose ambition was to make people happy by making them reasonable and just. The surest, noblest way to fail is to set one’s standards titanically high.

“The flip side of that proposition also seems true. The surest way to succeed is to keep one’s striving low. Many people, by external standards, will be ‘successes.’ They will own homes, eat in better restaurants, dress well and, in some instances, perform socially useful work. Yet fewer people are putting themselves on the line, making as much of their minds and talents as they might. Frequently, success is what people settle for when they can’t think of something noble enough to be worth failing at.”

- Laurence Shames

Laurence Shames, formerly the Ethics columnist for Esquire, is a critically acclaimed novelist and essayist.

“We all live under the same sky, but we don’t have the same horizon.”

- Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (1876-1967) was a German statesman. As the first post-war Chancellor of Germany from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation.