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I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

Ellen Goodman

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Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Inspirational
Convinced
Change
Especially
Make
Motivational
Never
Difference
Life
Differences
Heroics
World
Struggle
Awed
People
Small
Goodman
History
Impressed

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My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.
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It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through.
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I vote because it's what small-d democracy is about. Because there are places where people fight for generations and stand for hours to cast a ballot knowing what we ought to remember: that it makes a difference. Not always a big difference. Not always an immediate difference. But a difference.
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Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.
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The great myth of our work-intense era is 'quality time.' We believe we can make up for the loss of days or hours, especially with each other, by concentrated minutes. But ultimately there is no way to do one-minute mothering. There is no way to pay attention in a hurry.
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Forty is ... an age at which people have histories and options. At thirty, they had perhaps less history. At fifty, perhaps fewer options.
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You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.
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Ultimately, time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savour it.
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You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.
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I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.
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I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.
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She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.
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