Michel de Montaigne

“Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom.”

Adam Cooper and Bill Collage

“You don’t need fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with the desire to better themselves.”

Asking Better Questions

Everyone has a need to connect honestly with others, and a very expedient way to foster improved connections is by asking good questions. Whether you are talking to customers, interviewing job candidates, talking to their bosses, or even questioning staff, we often need to draw people out. And so often, it is not a matter of what you ask, it is how you ask it. John Baldoni suggest that being curious, open-ended, and engaged.

Oscar Wilde

“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

Project H, Designing For Humanity

“People were starting to talk more about sustainability, but I felt it lacked a human factor. Can we really call $5,000 bamboo coffee tables sustainable?” Since founding the humanitarian design network Project H Design in January 2008, Emily Pilloton has been involved with dozens of projects tackling social and environmental problems. They range from developing water transportation devices for use in Africa, to helping homeless people in San Francisco design things to sell, and repairing school furniture in rural Mexico. Even as a product design student, Ms. Pilloton felt skeptical about conventional approaches to design and is now trying to redefine sustainable design.

George Herbert

“Storms make oaks take deeper root.”

Liz Friedman

“If you really want to do something, you do it. You don’t save it for a sound bite.”

What Makes Couples Happy?

What makes marriages last? It’s the small stuff, it turns out: telling him he looks great in his jeans, bringing her coffee in bed in the morning, sneaking off without the kids from time to time, taking turns doing the laundry. Terri Orbuch, a Michigan-based research professor and a family therapist, spent decades charting the love lives of 373 married couples in the U.S. — the longest-running study of marriage conducted in North America. The results were surprisingly simple. “Really great marriages are not the result of long hours of hard work, but of everyday behaviours and attitudes, seemingly small gestures that show your spouse that he or she is noticed, appreciated, respected, loved and desired,” Orbuch noted.

A. L. Kitselman

“The words ‘I am…’ are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.”

John Adams

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”

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