“The ability to concentrate singlemindedly on your most important task, to do it well and to finish it completely, is the key to great success, achievement, respect, status, and happiness in life. This key insight is the heart and soul of this book.

“The future belongs to the competent. It belongs to those who are very, very good at what they do. It does not belong to the well-meaning.”

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and importance, although  difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude  toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather  than allowing it to master you.”

“If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

“Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”

“The Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important things.”

“There are a thousand excuses for failure but never a good reason.” —MARK TWAIN”

“By concentrating single-mindedly on your most important task, you can reduce the time required to complete it by 50 percent or more. It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task—to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it—can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent. Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively.”

“Sometimes we need to let go of things in our lives to make room for better things. Stress less and live more. Don't waste your energy, when you have the choice to be happy.”

“You perform at your highest potential only when you are focusing on the most valuable use of your time. This is the key to personal and business success. It is the central issue in personal efficiency and time management. You must always be asking yourself, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? Discipline yourself to work exclusively on the one task that, at any given time, is the answer to this question. Keep yourself on track and focused on your most important responsibilities by asking yourself, over and over, What is the most valuable use of my time right now? How you can apply this law immediately: 1. Remember that you can do only one thing at a time. Stop and think before you begin. Be sure that the task you do is the highest-value use of your time. Remind yourself that anything else you do while your most important task remains undone is a relative waste of time. 2. Be clear about the most valuable work that you do for your organization. Whatever it is, resolve to concentrate on doing that specific task before anything else. Why are you on the payroll? What specific, tangible, measurable results are expected of you? And of all the different results you are capable of achieving, which are the most important to your career at this moment? Whatever the answer, this is where you must focus your energies, and nowhere else.”

“There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.” 

“Whatever you believe, with feeling, becomes your reality.”

“Perhaps the most important insight of all with regard to success is that to achieve greatly, you must become a different person. It is not the material things you accomplish or acquire that matter so much as it is the quality of the person you must become to accomplish well above the average. The development of self-discipline is the high road that makes everything possible for you.”

“try a democratic environment. Ask your child’s opinions, make them feel as though they matter and their feelings are valued. The same time and energy spent on an argument later can be spent listening to their opinions in the first place. When you take your child’s feelings into consideration, when you ask their opinions, it makes them feel important even if they don’t always get their way.”