Initiative is to success what a lighted match is to a candle.
When life does not go our way or we inadvertently make a mistake, it is so easy to make excuses, place blame on others, or argue that circumstances were against us. But we only progress in life to the extent that we take responsibility for our actions and attitudes, and put forth the initiative necessary to create our own circumstances.
I hope that France - and all of Europe - we would take an initiative for the year 2012 to be the year of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Take stands, take risks, take responsibility.
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.
Nothing sweeter than to drag oneself along behind events; and nothing more reasonable. But without a strong dose of madness, no initiative, no enterprise, no gesture. Reason: the rust of our vitality. It is the madman in us who forces us to adventure; once he abandons us, we are lost; everything depends on him, even our vegetative life; it is he who invites us, who obliges us to breathe, and it is also he who forces our blood to venture through our veins. Once he withdraws, we are alone indeed! We cannot be normal and alive at the same time.
Above all, as the keynote of all Democratic policy, in passing upon any question, let the controlling aim and ambition be to keep the road open for private enterprise and personal initiative.
If you can defend, counter-attack and take the initiative then you become a more dangerous player.
We do not make friends with God; God makes friends with us, bringing us to know him by making his love known to us. . . The word know, when used of God in this way, is a sovereign-grace word, pointing to God's initiative in loving, choosing, redeeming, calling and preserving.
I would like to initiate an initiative - the Broadway Annoying Audience Member Relocation Programme.
Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research.
New York has one of the largest school systems in the country, but it's one of the best school systems in the country. I worked on an initiative called Family Strengthening. What it meant was we began to work with families, people coming out who were incarcerated, connecting them back to the family. Kids today, some of them need psychological help, not just providing for them. We have issues - we have to break cycles. We need to be accountable and we need to assess what's working and what's not working.
The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do - by yourself, upon your own initiative.
I think our initiative with respect to education and economic development can work in Saudi Arabia and it is up to the Saudis to decide how they wish to transform their society in order to make it prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.
We count, in the future as in the past, on the driving power of individual initiative, on the incentive of fair private profit, strengthened of course with the acceptance of those obligations to the public interest which rest upon us all.
Change requires individuals who recognize that new things can be done and who take the initiative to get them done. . . The existing bureaucracies, public and private, will not take on the job of changing what is.
The people that work with you should generally come up with their own initiatives.
Whoever lacks the initiative to read books stifles his own selfhood.
The great experimental principle, then, is doubt, that philosophic doubt which leaves to the mind its freedom and initiative, and from which the virtues most valuable to investigators in physiology and medicine are derived.