“The highest paid Americans read an average of two to three hours per day. The lowest paid Americans don't read at all... ...58% of adults never read another book after they leave high school—including 42% of university graduates... ...43.6% of American adults read below the 7th grade level... they are functionally illiterate... fully 50% of high school graduates cannot read their graduation diplomas, nor fill out an application form for a job at McDonald’s...”

“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.”

“The more you discipline yourself to use your time well, the happier you will feel and the better will be the quality of your life in every area.”

“The potential consequences of any task or activity are the key determinants of how important a task really is to you and to your company.”

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

“You can’t decide to value your child sometimes, and then put a game of Farmville, or golf, or a scrapbooking session before kids on other days. Values are non-negotiable like that.”

“if you expect to be successful, you will eventually be successful. If you expect to be happy and popular, you will be happy and popular. If you expect to be healthy and prosperous, that is what will happen... Always think and talk positively about the future. Start every morning by saying: 'I believe something wonderful is going to happen to me today.' Then, throughout the day, expect the best.”

“Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.”

“Don't fight your thoughts. Allow them to come, but don’t cling to them. The small gaps between thoughts create the power in meditation.”

“The starting point of great success in your life begins, in the simplest terms, when you discipline yourself to think and talk about only the things you want and refuse to think and talk about anything you don't want.”

“Whenever you face crunch time in your life or business, mentally call a time-out in the game and focus on getting all the information you can about the situation before you make a decision or overreact.”

“There is more to life than just increasing its speed.”

“You are what you think you are. Your self-concept determines your performance.”

“Josh Billings once wrote, “It ain’t what a man knows what hurts him. It’s what he knows what ain’t true.”

“Josh Billings wrote, “It’s not what a man knows that hurts him; it’s what he knows that isn’t true.”