• 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.

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

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

– Buddha

He who wants to tear down a house must be prepared to rebuild it.”

– African Proverb

Whosoever knows how to fight well is not angry. Whosoever knows how to conquer enemies does not fight them.”

– Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

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

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”

– Annie Dillard

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

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

– Uli Becker, president, Reebok International

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

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

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 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

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

– Groucho Marx

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.”

– Ray Bradbury

My goal was to tell the life side of the story. We have become a nation of voyeurs that expect sensationalism, and that offends me.”

– Kathleen Jo Ryan

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

– Audre Lorde

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

– Albert Schweitzer

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

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

– Brian Tracy

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

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

– Thomas Carlyle

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.”

– Joseph Addison

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

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

If you think you are too small to make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in your room.”

– A wisdomism

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

Remove those ‘I want you to like me’ stickers from your forehead
and, instead, place them where they truly will do the most good—on your mirror.”

– Susan Jeffers

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

Passion makes perfect.”

– Eugene Biro

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

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far.”

– Steve Jobs

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

– Alfred Adler

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

– Oprah Winfrey

There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

– J. Robert Oppenheimer

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

– Albert Einstein

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

– Marcel Proust

Do one thing every day that scares you.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

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

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be…”

– John Lennon