* “Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.”
-- Felix Adler

I have to keep trying to manifest actions and deeds that reflect the real me, even if the world doesn't yet see me the way I know I am inside, because I know who I am.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

* we cannot afford to settle for being just average; we must learn as much as we can to be the best that we can. The key word is education -- education with maximum effort. Without it, we cannot be in charge of ourselves or anyone else.
-- Bill Cosby

* You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.
-- Marian Wright Edelman

* Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
-- Albert Einstein

“We have to do the best we can. This is our sacred human responsibility.”
-- Albert Einstein

* "Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

* "As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world ... as in being able to remake ourselves."
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems”
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

* “When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”
-- Helen Keller

“I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end”
-- Abraham Lincoln

* It is hardly possible to overrate the value, for the improvement of human beings, of things which bring them into contact with persons dissimilar to themselves and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar... It is indispensable to be perpetually comparing [one's] own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances... There is no nation which does not need to borrow from others.
-- John Stuart Mill

* “If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.”
-- Anita Roddick

* A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.
-- Albert Schweitzer

* I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. - Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. -- Socrates

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
-- Henry David Thoreau

* If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
-- Henry David Thoreau

* I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant and unexpected encouragement, if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day, and as nearly as possible reaching the high water mark of pure and useful living.
-- Booker T. Washington

* The kind of national goal we ought to be thinking about is way beyond national product - it is how do we as a nation help our children be the best kinds of people they could possibly be?
-- Paul Wellstone