• Columnists

Pam Ray, Lobbyist

COLUMN = GOVERNMENT RELATIONS

Pam has more than three decades of in-depth experience in policy and politics, with expertise in congressional budget/appropriations and federal grant programs.

Her select policy experience includes housing and community development, housing finance, transit/transportation, taxes, and trade.

With a focus on bridging the knowledge gap between elected officials and their constituents, Pam has achieved success in her own government relations business for 16 years and for elected officials in the US Senate, US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs (1989-95), and the NYS Senate Federal Affairs Office (1986-1989).

For more information, visit www.pamrayllc.com.

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you.”

– Byron Katie

Nobody talks about entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what nurtures creative thinking.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.”

– Henry David Thoreau

You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”

– Goldie Hawn

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?”

– Magical

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

If you want to be busy, keep trying to be perfect. If you want to be happy, focus on making a difference.”

– Lisa Earle McLeod

Education is an admirable thing to have, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught.”

– Oscar Wilde

The mind is everything. What you think, you become.”

– Buddha

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

– Robert Fritz

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

The music is all around us. All you have to do is listen.”

– August Rush

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. The greatest failure is to not try.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

Death is to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”

– Thomas Wolfe

If people like you they’ll listen to you; if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.”

– Zig Ziglar

You may ask me for anything you like except time.”

– Napoleon

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”

– President Calvin Coolidge

Who cares if my glass is half empty or half full; I still have something to drink.”

– Optimism rules

The journey is the reward.”

– Greg Norman

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. 
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.”

– Mary Jean Irion

Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them!”

– Madam C.J. Walker

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

– Bob Dylan

Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask, and that’s what separates the people who do things from the people who just dream about them.”

– Steve Jobs

The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

I don’t do very well without fear. There needs to be a part of me saying, ‘That’s going to fail,’ so I can prove myself wrong.”

– Harry Potter's Daniel Radcliffe

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

– Mark Twain

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.”

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Friendship is the only cement that will hold the world together.”

– Woodrow Wilson

Women once had the goal of being Superwoman; I think most of us now simply strive to have a super day.”

– Author, Activist Lee Woodruff

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

If you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.”

– Oprah Winfrey

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”

– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

‎The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation of human nature.”

– Muhammad Yunus

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”

– Carl Rogers

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

My job is my hobby. I come to work to play.”

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International