“As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7) Many times I have preached that one’s attitude determines his altitude.  How much a person achieves in life will be based on his ability to kep a positive, productive attitude.  … Did you know that faith comes from attitude?  Attitude can be either positive or negative.  Positive attitudes attract faith to us.  [...]

There are four kinds of people: 1.  Those who sell ideas that produce sorrow. 2.  Those who let everybody go their way. 3.  Those who try to feebly make people but are always reminding themselves of their own inadequacies.  In so doing, therefore, little is accomplished. 4.  Those who make brand new people out of people by selling them on a goal — an upward reach.  Help them get a grip [...]

Man is the only creature who can aspire, and to me aspiration is one of the finest of all human endowments.  Our minds can mount on wings like eagles and so can our thoughts, our purposes, our souls.  It is a tragedy that so many men never try their wings and never aspire to higher and holier altitudes. – Charles L. Allen, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta GA., May 30, 1958

Ambition is the mainspring to many noble deeds and to high achievement.  Show me a man from whose eyes has gone the light of ambition and from whose breast the desire to excel has departed, and I will show you a man who is content with the commonplace and whose life is to be measured in terms of the vanishing point. We all need more ambition, and we need to arouse it’s spark, if possible, in [...]

Image by jesuscm via Flickr Lincoln said:  “I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.” What others think of you is not as important as what you think of yourself, for others might be [...]

There is nothing else which calls so much out of a young person as grave responsibility.  Somehow other things do not reach the reserves of human power as responsibility does.  The pampered idle young man of wealth never discovers anything like his greatest possibilities, his real strength, unless an unexpected emergency makes a demand on him.  He never really knows his power until he has shouldered [...]

Image by Paul Chenoweth via Flickr The willingness to accept a job and follow through with it without diversion from the original purpose and intent, is a mark of genius.  High in the categories of men of achievement will ever be found those who can assume responsibility. – Gaines S. Dobbins, The Sunday School Builder, Nashville, TN., June 1954

Purpose kindles the flame of ambition on the alter of the heart and inspires the soul to all worthy endeavor.  A presiding purpose conserves energy.  An aimless man is guilty of the worst kind of waste. … A presiding purpose not only conserves energy, but it inspires to action.  Purpose is power, motive power.  It is like a lever in mechanics.  It is like the pressure of steam in an engine.  [...]

The greatest asset an individual can have is the spirit of progress.  Without it all else is largely in vain.  With it every good thing is possible.  What is the spirit of progress?  It is the desire to know what constitutes true success and the willingness to take the patient steps which lead to it; the desire to correct errors, traits and tendencies which retard progress and the willingness to [...]

One of the definite controlling factors of all life — self-discipline — that which a man uses when he is tempted by someone or something to do something or say something that he knows he ought not to do or say.  When he gets the courage and the stamina to say no and mean it, then he can take charge of his life and go forward. – Hugh B. Brown, “Father Are You There?”, [...]