it has been said …
about Volunteering – Philanthropy - Life
Anonymous
You will find as you look back upon your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others.
The difference between 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' is just that little 'extra'.
Snowflakes melt alone - but together they can be traffic stoppers!
Teamwork allows common people to attain uncommon results.
Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.
Some people want it to happen, some wish it to happen, others make it happen.
Volunteers are not paid not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
If you insist on measuring yourself, place the tape around your heart not your head.
Mother Teresa
- We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
- We can do no great things, only small things with great love.
- There is a tremendous strength that is growing in the world through sharing together, praying together, suffering together and working together.
- To show great love for God and our neighbor we need not do great things. It is how much love we put in the doing that makes our offering something beautiful for God.
- Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
- Love cannot remain by itself -- it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.
- Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. We must find each other.
- Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
World Servants
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment: we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make a contribution toward introducing justice straight away. - Anne Frank
I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.
- Albert Schweitzer, Ph. D.
There is no better exercise for your heart, than reaching down and helping to lift someone up. - Bernard Meltzer, American attorney, Nuremberg Trials
One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world. - Dr. E. H. Mayo
We can do anything we want, if we stick to it long enough. - Helen Keller
The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. - Ralph Nichols
Presidents, Politicians, World Leaders
Every problem that the country faces is being solved in some community by some group or some individual. The question is how to get connected so that the whole nation can solve problems. - George H. W. Bush
A volunteer is a person who can see what others cannot see; who can feel what most do not feel. - George H. W. Bush
Often, such gifted persons do not think of themselves as volunteers, but as citizens - citizens in the fullest sense: partners in civilization. - George H. W. Bush
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke, British statesman and orator
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people. - Theodore Roosevelt
Never before has man had such a great capacity to control his own environment, to end hunger, poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and human misery. We have the power to make the best generation of mankind in the history of the world.
- John F. Kennedy
No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers. - Ronald Reagan
We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill
Living is the art of loving. Loving is the art of caring. Caring is the art of sharing. Sharing is the art of living. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
- Booker T. Washington
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for someone else.
- Benjamin Franklin
When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. - Eleanor Roosevelt
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
If you want to innovate, to change an enterprise or a society, it takes people willing to do what is not expected. - Jean Ribault, French explorer
We seldom stop to think how many people's lives are entwined with our own. It is a form of selfishness to imagine that every individual can operate on his own or can pull out of the general stream and not be missed. - Ivy Baker Priest, US Treasurer
Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Everyone can be great because anyone can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't even have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve... You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
- We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service relationship to humanity.
- If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he's traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain.
- Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all men. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. Theologians would say that it is the love of God operating in the human heart. When you rise to love on this level, you love all men not because you life them, not because their ways appeal to you, but you love them because God loves them.
Writers, Poets, Philosophers
A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
- Henrik Ibsen
One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
- Japanese Proverb
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being. - Goethe
Kindness is more important than wisdom and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. - Theodore Isaac Rubin
Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation's compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another.
- Erma Bombeck
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. – Aesop
Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means. - Leo Buscaglia
You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time. - M. Scott Peck
Seek first to understand, then to be understood. - Stephen R. Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Learn to lead in a nourishing manner. Learn to lead without being possessive. Learn to be helpful without taking the credit. Learn to lead without coercion. - Lao Tzu, philosopher
In this troubled world, it's refreshing to find someone who still has the time to be kind. Someone who still has the faith to believe that the more you give, the more you receive. Someone who's ready by thought, word, or deed to reach out a hand, in the hour of need. - Helen Steiner Rice
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on the future generations. - George Bernard Shaw
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on . . . The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
- Walter Lippmann
Nothing is so contagious as example; and we never do any great good or evil which does not produce its like. Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A pessimist, they say, sees a glass of water as being half empty; an optimist sees the same glass as half full. But a giving person sees a glass of water and starts looking for someone who might be thirsty. - G. Donald Gale
Love is not getting, but giving. Not a wild dream of pleasure and a madness of desire--oh, no--love is not that! It is goodness and honor and peace and pure living. Yes, love is that and it is the best thing in the world and the thing that lives the longest. - Henry Van Dyke
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint Exupery, French aviator and writer
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
- Etienne de Grellet, Quaker missionary and writer
Celebrities, Actors, Sportsmen
The miracle is this - the more we share, the more we have. - Leonard Nimoy
Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others. - Danny Thomas
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden, Hall of Fame Basketball Coach
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. - David Brinkley, Television Journalist
Business, Non-Profit Leaders
We need to reclaim what we have for too long ignored and neglected: the opportunity for active and meaningful engagement in our own communities.
- BillShore, founder and executive director of Share Our Strength
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong.
- George Washington Carver, inventor and agriculturalist
How can we expect our children to know and experience the joy of giving unless we teach them that the greater pleasure in life lies in the art of giving rather than receiving.
- James Cash Penny, founder JC Penney corporation
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys. - Sam Walton
If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested. - E. M. Forster
If you wish to make a man your enemy, tell him simply, 'You are wrong.' This method works every time. - Henry C. Link
Extraordinary things are accomplished by a healing heart. - Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS
Volunteering can be an exciting, growing, enjoyable experience. It is truly gratifying to serve a cause, practice one's ideals, work with people, solve problems, see benefits, and know one had a hand in them. - Harriet Naylor, volunteering pioneer
Our nation will succeed or fail to the degree that all of us citizens and businesses alike are active participants in building strong, sustainable and enriching communities.
- Arnold Hiatt, Stride Rite CEO
Somewhere on this planet, someone has a solution to each of the world's problems. It might be one of us. With your help, we can build a more hopeful world.
- Marianne Larned, Stone Soup Leadership Institute
