.

• Role model: A person looked to by others as an example to be imitated.  Oxford Dictionary
• Role model: A person who someone admires and whose behaviour they try to copy.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Role model: A person who serves as a model in a particular behavioral or social role for another person to emulate.  American Heritage Dictionary
• Inspiration,  Learning,  Mentorship,  Influence

.

.

Find people whose behaviour you can learn from and follow

• Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public. Epictetus
• Even though we don’t admit it, every single one of us aspires to be like somebody, whether they live in the world today, within the bard’s lyrics, or on the pages in the Library. Evan Meekins
• Do not think of your faults; still less of others’ faults. Look for what is good and strong and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes. John Ruskin
• The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion. Jean Claude Killy
• How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! Maya Angelou
• You’re lucky in life if you have the right heroes. I advise all of you, to the extent that you can, pick out a few heroes. There’s nothing like the right ones. Warren Buffett
• Learning

.

You can learn much from excellence in others

• Next to excellence is the appreciation of it. William Makepeace
• It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. Wendell Berry
• Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your highest potential. Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan
• By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. Voltaire
• Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary. Warren G. Bennis
• Excellence,  Mastery

.

Observing, studying and modelling the behaviour of others can bring great rewards

• Accelerate your progress towards success by modeling those who are already successful. It’s much easier to copy what someone else has already done. What’s even better, is you can then improve upon what someone has done and achieve better results, often in a shorter period of time. Tony Robbins
• A prudent person profits from personal experience, a wise one from the experience of others. Dr. Joseph Collins
• Very few men are wise by their own counsel, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself had a fool for his master. Ben Johnson
• Judgment can be acquired only by acute observation, by actual experience in the school of life, by ceaseless alertness to learn from others, by study of the activities of men who have made notable marks, by striving to analyze the everyday play of causes and effects, by constant study of human nature. B.C. Forbes
• You’ve got to be careful whom you pattern yourself after because you’re likely to become just like them. Rich Mayo
• Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for. Socrates
• If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results. Tony Robbins
• No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals. Brian Tracy

.

Be inspired and learn from the success of others

• As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear, the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us. Francesco Guicciardini
• Never begrudge someone else’s good fortune. Acknowledge it and feel good about it, for it is proof that it can be done. Look for and acknowledge success everywhere you can. John Kehoe
• That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well. Abraham Lincoln
• Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds. James Cash Penney
• Whatever your discipline, become a student of excellence in all things. Take every opportunity to observe people who manifest the qualities of mastery. These models of excellence will inspire you and guide you toward the fulfillment of your highest potential. Michael Gelb and Tony Buzan
• Success,  Inspiration,  Learning

.

Learn from other’s vices and mistakes too

• If I am walking with two other people, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself. Confucius
• Learn from the mistakes of others- you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. Martin Vanbee
• A man is fortunate if he encounters living examples of vice, as well as of virtue, to inspire him. Brendan Francis
• Vice,  Mistakes

.

.

Your role models don’t have to be famous

• The most important role models in people’s lives, it seems, aren’t superstars or household names. They’re ‘everyday’ people who quietly set examples for you – coaches, teachers, parents. People about whom you say to yourself, perhaps not even consciously, ‘I want to be like that. Tim Foley
• Some of the most important people in my life would be shocked to learn that they were role models. They weren’t celebrities, or even particularly accomplished. But they had some quality that I admired, that made me want to be like them. Donn Moomaw

.

Your role models don’t have to to be living

• You don’t have to know people personally for them to be role models. Some of my most important role models were historical or literary figures that I only read about–never actually met. John Wilson
• I claim Dickens as a mentor. He’s my teacher. He’s one of my driving forces. Anne Rice

.

Study the lives of the great for they hold rich lessons

• I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work. Harry S. Truman
• Call the roll in your memory of conspicuously successful business giants and … you will be struck by the fact that almost every one of them encountered inordinate difficulties sufficient to crush all but the gamest of spirits. Edison went hungry many times before he became famous. B.C. Forbes

.

.

While it’s great to be inspired by the lives of others, make sure you live your own life

• Having a role model in life is a great thing to have; one who provides us with direction and inspiration. However, we will forever be restricted by that person’s limitations if we live within their boundaries. Be influenced, but set your own standards and develop your own principals, if you are ever to live beyond someone else’s dreams. Jason Shahan
• If you are trying to imitate someone else’s greatness, you have missed the point of greatness. The secret is to find your own unique style and talents and bring them forth. No one has ever attained mastery by replicating another. The truly great simply replicate themselves. Alan Cohen
• Never follow somebody else’s path; it doesn’t work the same way twice for anyone…the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way. Michael Straczynski

.

Don’t confuse celebrity and hero worship

• Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models.  We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.  Daniel J. Boorstin
• Fame

.

.

Be a role model yourself…

• Each person must live their life as a model for others. Rosa Parks
• If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you. Ray Bradbury
• One of the daunting things about being an achiever in any field is that suddenly you have the power to influence people. Some sports heroes say, ‘I don’t want that responsibility.’ But that’s the wrong reaction. The right reaction is, ‘Okay, I’ve got some influence. How do I use it to help someone else be successful too?’    Tim Foley

.

… especially for your children

• Don’t worry that children never listen to you. Worry that they are always watching you. Robert Fulghum
• Whether or not you have children yourself, you are a parent to the next generation. If we can only stop thinking of children as individual property and think of them as the next generation, then we can realize we all have a role to play. Charlotte Davis-Kasl
• Children have more need of models than of critics. Joseph Joubert
• By being a living role model of what you want to receive from others, you create more of what you want in your life. Eric Allenbaugh
• If your kid needs a role model and you ain’t it, you’re both fucked. George Carlin
• Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. James Baldwin
• I think kids should have a mentor and a role model, but that they shouldn’t take one person’s opinion to be what we call final assessment or judgment about how life is supposed to be. Sean Paul
• Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life’s scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children’s lives.  Stephen Covey
• You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. Marian Wright Edelman

.

• If you can’t imitate him don’t copy him.  Yogi’ Berra
• When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other.  Hoffer’s Law

.

.