Lily Tomlin's Quotes

Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

Ninety eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

Don't be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.

Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

The best mind-altering drug is the truth.

Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.

If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.

Remember we're all in this alone.

The problem with winning the rat race is you're still a rat.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it's moving you away from your goals.

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the world can throw at you.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

Your company's most valuable asset is how it is known to its customers.

Your greatest asset is your earning ability. Your greatest resource is your time.

Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.

If you like a person you say 'let's go into business together.' Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger.

Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.

Achieving the highest possible return on human capital must be every manager's goal.

Managers today have to do more with less, and get better results from limited resources, more than ever before.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

The more you seek security, the less of it you have. But the more you seek opportunity, the more likely it is that you will achieve the security that you desire.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, 'What's in it for me?'

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of evry part of your life.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.

Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed.

Successful people are simply those with successful habits.

The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you.

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.