“Ninety percent of all those who fail are not actually defeated. They simply quit.”

“Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“you must be able to take the new thing you’ve learned today and build upon what you learned yesterday to keep growing.”

“life.When they find someone who can communicate something of value to them, they will usually listen.”

“Leaders are effective because of who they are on the inside—in the qualities that make them up as people. And to go to the highest level of leadership, people have to develop these traits from the inside out.”

“Learning to write is learning to think. You don’t know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.”

“If you could kick the person responsible for most of your troubles, you wouldn't be able to sit down for weeks.”

“Great minds have purposes; others have wishes. Little minds are subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.”

“I got to the top the hard way—fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way.”

“POSITIVE ATTITUDE: THE FIRST KEY TO WHAT HAPPENS IN YOU”

“Every successful person is someone who failed, yet never regarded himself as a failure.”

“If your perception of and response to failure were changed, what would you attempt to achieve?”

“1. Cop-outs. People who have no goals and do not commit. 2. Holdouts. People who don’t know if they can reach their goals, so they’re afraid to commit. 3. Dropouts. People who start toward a goal but quit when the going gets tough. 4. All-outs. People who set goals, commit to them, and pay the price to reach”

“Adapt to them—don’t expect them to adapt to you.”