American writer and motivational speaker
Jack Canfield (born August 19, 1944) is an American author and motivational speaker. He is the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which has more than 250 titles and 500 million copies in print in over 40 languages. In 2005 Canfield co-authored with Janet Switzer The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
Try QuoteGPT
Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.
"Discouraged?
As I was driving home from work one day, I stopped to watch a local Little League baseball game that was being played in a park near my home. As I sat down behind the bench on the first-baseline, I asked one of the boys what the score was.
"We’re behind 14 to nothing,” he answered with a smile.
“Really,” I said. “I have to say you don’t look very discouraged.”
“Discouraged?” the boy asked with a puzzled look on his face. “Why should we be discouraged? We haven’t been up to bat yet.
A group of water bugs was talking one day about how they saw other water bugs climb up a lily pad and disappear from sight. They wondered where the other bugs could have gone. They promised one another that if one of them ever went up the lily pad and disappeared, it would come back and tell the others where it had gone. About a week later one of the water bugs climbed up the lily pad and emerged on the other side. As it sat there, it transformed into a dragonfly. Its body took on an iridescent sheen, and four beautiful wings sprouted from its back. The dragonfly flapped its wings and took off in flight, doing loops and spins through the sunlit sky. In the midst of its joyful flight, it remembered the promise it had made to return and tell the other bugs where it had gone. So the dragonfly swooped down to the surface of the water and tried to reenter the water, but try as it would, it could not return. The dragonfly said to itself, Well, I tried to keep my promise, but even if I did return, the others wouldn’t recognize me in my new glorious body. I guess they will just have to wait until they climb the lily pad to find out where I have gone and what I have become.
A young woman entered a cafeteria in New York City, placed her suitcase by a table where another person was eating, and went off to get some food. While she was away, a young man came by, picked up her bag, and walked off with it. In only one out of eight trials of this experiment did the customer at the table make an effort to stop him. When the same woman again entered the cafeteria and placed her bag down by a table where someone else was sitting, but then asked that person to keep an eye on it while she got some food, her table mate stopped the young man when he began to make away with it every time. On another day, the same young woman visited a beach, spread out her blanket, left a radio on it, and went off, either saying nothing to the nearest bystander or else asking that person to keep an eye on her things. Moriarity got the same results. At both locations, nearly all of the bystanders she asked to watch her possession tried to stop the “thief,” but of those she did not ask, only a few — one in eight in the cafeteria and one in five at the beach — did so. 4 — Pryor Report, February 1992