There are few things in life better than an inspirational quote. History is full of wise men and women who have managed to use their imaginations to inspire the world by reducing the wisdom of the Universe into single sentences. For example, everyone remembers Winston Churchill's “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” We can even go back to Epicurus, who was alive when all the other old Greek people were. He said magical things like "The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it," and "You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity." The great thing about the Internet is that we now have all this wisdom at our fingertips - Mark Twain, Socrates, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bernard Shaw, they are all just a Google search away.
However, today I would like to focus on some of the lesser known inspirational and motivational quotes from throughout history. For example, in 336 BCE, Quaqulus, a part-time swimming instructor, had big dreams - he wanted to inspire the world with his wisdom. Unfortunately, he was not as gifted as Epicurus - and his legacy is not quite as impressive. He is perhaps best known for, "The world is really big, and that's why it's difficult to go everywhere." He tried to better this a year later; when he penned "The value of friendship is quite high." He finally gave up inspirational quotes the year before his death, when the best he could come up with was "Sometimes things are really difficult. The key is to not always have times that are really difficult, if possible."
One of the biggest tragedies from the Ancient Greeks, apart from the Greek Tragedies, was that of Dyslexicus. It was known throughout Greece in 325 BCE that Dyslexicus was a greatly gifted writer and philosopher, but unfortunately; due to being unable to afford a proofreader, many of his greatest quotes make little sense. For example, "The greatest in life difficult is when of love challenge believing," and "All men have the power power of change was."
Afred. B. Plimpton was an extremely gifted writer and businessman in the early nineteen hundreds. He was believed to be way ahead of time, a true visionary who could inspire dozens of people. However, his speeches never quite reached the masses. Looking back over his transcripts, we can now see why. Although he had a great imagination, he could never quite find the right wording. It wasn't until much later that other big thinkers were to take his ideas and improve them. For example, during a speech to members of Congress in 1910 he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do inside of your own home," and "You may say that I'm a dreamer, I am not only a dreamer." It's interesting to see how agonizingly close he came to inspiring the world.
In August 1933, only months before his death, Plimpton released his Autobiography. His writing had matured, and he was now tackling bigger subjects. On talking about the rise of consumerism, he said - "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know which shop to buy them in." At the end of the book, he wrote about witnessing the invention of the automobile. "That was one small step for man, one giant leap for the people who made the cars." History has gone on to forget Plimpton and his almost-genius -- but I think we can all see the potential.
