COMMUNITY
Lessons Learned
Experiences
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
— Benjamin Franklin
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
― Aldous Huxley
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt
Memories
Stories
“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
“The memory of all that — No, no! They can’t take that away from me.”
— Ira Gershwin
“One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.”
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.”
— William Cowper
“The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever really lost.”
— Eudora Welty
Context
Respect
“Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.”
— Laurence Sterne
“Respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that?”
— Marilyn Monroe
“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
— Lao Tzu
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
— Dr. Seuss
“How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are;
One day a bachelor, the next a grampa.
What is the secret of the trick?
How did I get so old so quick?”
— Ogden Nash
Purpose
Commitment
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“In the realm of Nature there is nothing purposeless, trivial, or unnecessary.”
— Maimonides
“Commitment is an act, not a word.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”
— George Bernard Shaw
“Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
— Vince Lombardi
Legacy
“There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.”
— Cervantes.
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” — William Shakespeare
“Our most important legacy will be the contributions we make to the lives of other human beings.”
— Thomas Kinkade
“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then you are an excellent leader.”
— Dolly Parton
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, wither write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Making friends with Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute staff and other visitors to Galeta Island in 2017
Galeta Island veterans celebrating nearly 60 years of friendship.
