"Do the best you can with what you have where you are right now" - those words have been attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt and several decades ago, when I first read them, the thought that initially came to me was "Those are great words to live by, I'll think I'll give it a try."
While I have not in fact been able to do exactly that, I have, on occasion, tried, which is much better than not having any sort of guiding principle at all.
Being one of those chowderheads that believes it is necessary to have guiding principles by which to live, I have written down and even committed to memory several old adages and axioms, and most if not all of them have proven to be helpful - that is, when I remember to apply them as intended.
Some of the other pithy statements I believe have helped keep me on a fairly steady track are the following;
"Act like a man of thought, think like a man of action" - this one was stated by French philosopher Henri Bergson (speech given at the Descartes conference, Paris 1937)
"The weakest ink is better than the strongest memory.' Chinese proverb
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - based on the words of French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace, made famous by Carl Sagan.
"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." James Thurber
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