Arianna Huffington Quotations

Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions, that we'll screw up royally sometimes - understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it's part of success.

There's no love more intense than the love we have for our kids - and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface.

Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one.

Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left.

It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes.

The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics - and our external ones too - the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are - as women and as mothers.

The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.

It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.

Increasingly, staying in the middle class - let alone aspiring to become middle class - is becoming a game of chance.

I think while all mothers deal with feelings of guilt, working mothers are plagued by guilt on steroids!

But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid.

Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an after-life.

Trying to be Supermom is as futile as trying to be Perfect Mom. Not going to happen.

America is a country ready to be taken-in fact, longing to be taken-by political leaders ready to restore democracy and trust to the political process.

The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules.

But, in fact, there is nothing that can bring you closer to fearlessness about everything else in the world than being a parent - because everyday fears - like not being approved of - pale by comparison to the fears you have about your children.

Liberation is an ever shifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises. It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred - it is the amphetamine of its believers.

There is nothing like becoming a mom to fill you with fear.

I'm pulling out, and I'm going to concentrate every ounce of time and energy over the next week working to defeat the recall because I realize now that's the only way to defeat Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Our campaign is designed to reach those 13 million eligible voters who are so disillusioned they didn't even vote in last year's election.

Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success.

Don’t just climb the ladder of success - a ladder that leads, after all, to higher and higher levels of stress and burnout - but chart a new path to success, remaking it in a way that includes not just the conventional metrics of money and power, but a third metric that includes well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving, so that the goal is not just to succeed but to thrive.

In life, the things that go wrong are often the very things that lead to other things going right.

It's important to remember that the future of quality journalism is not dependent on the future of newspapers. The discussion needs to move from "How do we save newspapers?" to "How do we save and strengthen journalism?" - however it is delivered.

I'm much more creative when I've actually taken care of myself.

The first step toward changing the world is to change our vision of the world and of our place in it.

Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.

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We take better care of our smartphone than ourselves. We know when the battery is depleted and recharge it

There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if - as the poet Rumi put it - everything is rigged in our favor.

We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in.

We're proud to offer a wide variety of bloggers from a wide variety of fields. Some are well-known, some are unknown - but all have something interesting to say. And we cover everything from politics, to entertainment, to media, to business, to style, to green, to our upcoming launch of a technology page - it's why we call HuffPost "The Internet Newspaper."

Clearly drive, IQ, and hard work are incredibly important. But ultimately what matters most is resilience--the ability to quickly rebound from failures, indeed to see failure as a stepping stone to success.

The happiest people are the most giving people

The key question facing those of us working in the media (old and new) is whether we embrace and adapt to the radical changes brought about by the Internet or pretend that we can somehow hop into a journalistic Way Back Machine and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected. There is no question that, as the industry moves forward and we figure out the new rules of the road, there will be - and needs to be - a great deal of experimentation with new revenue models.

If we don't know ourselves, our essence, where our true power comes from, we will believe our power comes from collecting victories, trophies, money, or recognition. And these are all fine, but it's not ultimately what life is about. When we think it is, we really waste our greatest possibilities.

We all have within us the ability to move from struggle to grace.

Fearlessness is the mother of reinvention.

What won't work - what can't work - is to act like the last years never happened, and that the survival of the [mass media] industry will be found by hiding content behind walled gardens. Instead of sticking their finger in the dike, trying to hold back the flow of innovation, companies need to ride the rapids of progress and seize the opportunities it provides.

My mother was a continual source of wisdom and great advice...she taught me that there is always a way around a problem-you've just got to find it. Keep trying doors; one will eventually open. She also taught me to accept failure as part and parcel of life. It's not the opposite of success; it's an integral part of success. I talk a lot about learning to become fearless in your approach to life. But fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's all about getting up one more time than you fall down.

Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident - all of those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.

Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down.

Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen.

Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.

Don't buy society's definition of success. Because it's not working for anyone. It's not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears, it's not working for the cicadas that are apparently about to emerge and swarm us. It's only truly working for those who make pharmaceuticals for stress, diabetes, heart disease, sleeplessness, and high blood pressure.

I studied, I met with medical doctors, scientists, and I’m here to tell you that the way to a more productive, more inspired, more joyful life is: getting enough sleep.

I think all the obituaries for newspapers we're hearing are premature. Many papers are belatedly but successfully adapting to the new news environment. I

I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when my second book was rejected by 36 publishers. Many years later, I watched HuffPost come alive

Our most meaningful relationships are based on a longing for expansion rather than a preoccupation with comfort and security. To live exuberantly-to fully know and be fully known by another-we must be prepared to illuminate the dark spots in our most intimate relationships and in our selves.

Consumer habits have changed dramatically. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, when they want it, how they want it, and where they want it. And this change is here to stay. Despite all the dire reports about the state of the newspaper industry, we are actually in the middle of a golden age for news consumers who can surf the Net, use search engines, access the best stories from around the world, and be able to comment, interact, and form communities.

People discover that by helping others, even when they themselves are suffering, they end up improving their own lives.

Failure is not the opposite to success, it's a stepping stone to success. If our primary goal is to be approved of, then we are not going to take risks, we are not going to speak out, we are going to try to blend in.

One of my big milestones came when I turned forty and promised myself to stop worrying about all the things I thought I might do but never really would. I was very relieved when I realized that you can actually complete a project by dropping it. That's how I "completed" learning to cook and learning German, becoming a good skier, and a list of other things too long to recite!

The essence of leadership is being able to see the iceberg before it hits the Titanic.

At the moment, our society's notion of success is largely composed of two parts: money and power. But it's time for a third metric, beyond money and power - one founded on well-being, wisdom, our ability to wonder, and to give back.

About five years ago, I fainted from exhaustion. I hit my head on my desk. I broke my cheekbone and got four stitches on my right eye. It started me on this journey of rediscovering sleep and balance and integrating my life. I think everyone should stop and reassess their lives before you hit your head on your desk.

Whether we regard the Women's Liberation movement as a serious threat, a passing convulsion, or a fashionable idiocy, it is a movement that mounts an attack on practically everything that women value today and introduces the language and sentiments of political confrontation into the area of personal relationships.

I firmly believe in a hybrid future where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy), and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism).

I think people are attracted to The Huffington Post's blend of up-to-the-second news and thoughtful opinion, delivered with an attitude. Plus, I think they enjoy that we cover so many different things - from politics and entertainment to style and satire. There is always something interesting to read and think about - and even to laugh at.

For too long, reporters for the big media outlets have been fixated on novelty, always moving too quickly onto the next big score or the next hot get. Paradoxically, in these days of instant communication and sixty-minute news cycles, it's actually easier to miss information we might otherwise pay attention to. That's why we need stories to be covered and re-covered until they filter up enough to become part of the cultural bloodstream.

Success is not a straight line, it's much more of a dance and being open to possibilities.

Everything you do, you'll do better with a good night's sleep,

Don't miss the moment. It's all we have

Don't just climb the ladder, chart a new path.

Arianna, your performance will actually improve if you can commit to not only working hard, but also unplugging, recharging and renewing yourself.

Ninety nine percent of the time it's not urgent and to create a culture where you are constantly plugged in and expected to be always-on is to create a culture of burnout.

Happiness is dealing with setbacks with more grace, understanding and acceptance

The current male-dominated model of success - which equates success with burnout, sleep deprivation, and driving yourself into the ground - isn't working for women, and it's not working for men, either.

You can do not just twice as much but 200 times as much when you have a good partner.

Don't wait until you're not afraid of something to do it. Do it despite the fear and you'll start to develop a 'fearlessness muscle'.

We're more than just our job titles or our list of professional accomplishments.

HuffPost serves as a starter page for news consumers, a place to find, and be directed to, the best content available on the Web. We consistently link out directly to other sites - often from our top-of-the-page headline.

What's the third metric beyond money and power? I think it's a combination of wellbeing and wisdom. Because the problem also with defining success just in terms of money and power means that people feel that they have to work around the clock, burn out, and the result is people making terrible decisions.

Never make decisions from a place of lack.

What preoccupies us is the way we define success. If you see your life purely in terms of money and power, then everything in your life becomes about 'Am I getting ahead?' and that is truly a barbaric way to live, because it eliminates huge chunks of our humanity.

I always try to practice what I preach. I meditate for fifteen minutes every day and do yoga several times a week.

Any time we have projects that we haven't begun or completed, they drain energy.

Nothing is ever enough when what you are looking for isn't what you really want.

In The 3rd Alternative, Stephen Covey urges us to chart a course beyond the suboptimal solutions to all our crises - beyond left and right, and beyond the many false choices in front of us. The 3rdAlternative is a wise and welcome echo of Einstein's warning that the problems we're facing today cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

Basically, success the way we've defined it is no longer sustainable. It's no longer sustainable for human beings or for societies.

We all have this place in us, a place of strength, harmony and wisdom, but most of the time we don't live there How can we course-correct faster? How can we encourage each other to live in that place more?

If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.’

All around the country, individuals are choosing to redefine their lives and the pursuit of happiness in ways much closer to the original notion put forth by our Founding Fathers. Their notion of the "pursuit of happiness" wasn't just about acquiring money and power, but about doing your part to add to the civic happiness of the community.

I've always said that I think one of the best and cheapest ways to become healthier and happier is through mindfulness exercises like meditation.

Today we often use deadlines—real and imaginary—to imprison ourselves.

Naysayers have little power over us - unless we give it to them.

The harder you try to suppress the truth, the more inevitable it is that it will find a way to come out.

We have created a democracy that links us all, and with it come not only opportunities but obligations. There are no gates or walls high enough. There are no bank accounts large enough to buy you and your family and your friends protection from the fear and hunger of those left behind or to isolate you from the consequences of growing social inequities. We are all in this boat together. And the fact that there isn't a hole at your end of the boat doesn't mean you are safe.

For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive.

Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?

More young people are volunteering than ever before. More people are including service to others on their busy lives' to do list. The promise of America is embedded deep in our DNA, calling us to a much less shallow search for happiness and meaning.

To live exuberantly, we must be prepared to illuminate the dark spots in ourselves.

We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what's left is who we truly are.

Being fearless doesn't mean living a life devoid of fear, but living a life in which our fears don't hold us back

The advice I would give to my younger self is very, very simple: Stop burning the candle at both ends and renew your estranged relationship with sleep. You will be more productive, more effective, more creative, and more likely to enjoy your life.

Failure is a stepping stone to success.

We don’t have to wait until we move or change jobs to change our lives. Nor do we have to wait for large-scale, upstream change. We can initiate change right now. There are endless starting points.

The more fearless we are in our personal lives, the more of that spirit we'll bring to changing our world.