If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

The following quotes have help guide my growth mindset thinking.  In the book Annapolis Creed I have provided personal quotes I call "Lessons Learned" at the end of each chapter.  In this post I want to share other quotes by other famous men and end the post with the famous "If" but RUDYARD KIPLING.  My Lexington teachers made us read, memorize this poem and I would often read at night before drifting off to sleep each night as a youth.  Enjoy!

1. “Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.”
—Dr. Mae Jemison, first African-American female astronaut

2. “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”
—W.E.B. Du Bois

4. “In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.” 
—Thurgood Marshall, first African American U.S. Supreme Court member

5. “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
—Coretta Scott King
6. “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”
—Langston Hughes

7. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
—Frederick Douglass

8. “The time is always right to do what is right.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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9. “Have a vision. Be demanding.”
—Colin Powell

If

​If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, 

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: 


If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster 

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, 

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 


If you can make one heap of all your winnings 

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 

And lose, and start again at your beginnings 

    And never breathe a word about your loss; 

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you 

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, 

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 

    If all men count with you, but none too much; 

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!