“One of the paradoxes of life is that the things that initially make you successful are rarely the things that keep you successful.”

“Contentment is taking your present situation—whatever obstacles you are facing, whatever limitation you are living with, whatever chronic condition wears you down, whatever has smashed your dreams, whatever factors and circumstances in life tend to push you under—and admitting you don’t like it but never saying, “I can’t cope with it.”

“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at”

“Care without candor creates dysfunctional relationships. Candor without care creates distant relationships.”

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

“The problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all.” —Kevin Myers”

“Not realizing what you want is a problem of knowledge. Not pursuing what you want is a problem of motivation. Not achieving what you want is a problem of persistence.”

“Dream don't work unless you do”

“Action is what converts human dreams into significance.”

“If you lead a team, start asking questions and really listening. Start valuing the contributions of your teammates ahead of your own. And remember that when the best idea wins, so does the entire team.”

“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!”

“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up not doing anything for anybody.”

“Sometimes we are afraid because success puts pressure on us to continue to succeed.”

“When we do more than we are paid to do, eventually we will be paid more for what we do

“Nurture great thoughts, for you will never go higher than your thoughts.”