“Discontent is the first necessity of progress” – Thomas Edison (b. 1847)

I like to start the new year with thinking about where I’m at, what I would like to accomplish in the coming year, and making plans. In December I suffered from discontent due to idleness and a cold apartment, causing me to yearn to be home where at least I have lots to do and a warm house.

My thinking led me to read: Philosophies of Innovation, History´s  Innovators, and Their Teaching On the Character of Innovation by Michael Tirado. It is a compilation of quotes from over 50 “of the most notable creators and innovators in history”. While filled with wisdom, what follows are the quotes I find most personally guiding for the new year.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” – Confucius (b. 551 BC)

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn” – Benjamin Franklin (b. 1706)

“A well spent day brings happy sleep” – Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452)

“Things won are done; joy´s soul lies in the doing” – William Shakespeare (b. 1564)

“We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that was not born to rest” – Voltaire (b. 1694)

“It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man” – Benjamin Franklin (b. 1706)

“To be is to do” – Immanuel Kant (b. 1724)

“The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more conscious we are of life” – Immanuel Kant (b. 1724)

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace at home” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (b. 1749)

¨Learning ballroom dancing is great for your brain.  But it  only works for three to six months.  After that, you’ve got all  the benefit you can get, and so you have to move on to yoga,  and then Tai Chi, and then bridge, always keeping on the steep  part of the learning curve” – Nolan Bushnell (b. 1943)

“Get busy living, or get busy dying” – Stephen king (b. 1947)