“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!”

“We must stop assuming that a thing which has never been done before probably cannot be done at all.” —Donald M. Nelson”

“It is easier to move from failure to success in from excuses to success.”

“Everybody on a championship team doesn’t get publicity, but everyone can say he’s a champion.”

“Cartoonist Henri Arnold said, “The wise man questions himself, the fool others.”

“Image promises much but produces little. Integrity never disappoints.”

“Thinking for a Change shares the way that I think on a daily basis. My wife, Margaret, says it has more of my DNA than any of my other books.”

“Success is... knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others.”

“To reach your potential you must grow. And to grow, you must be highly intentional about it.”

“Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.”

“Developing and maintaining integrity require constant attention. John Weston, chairman and CEO of Automatic Data Processing, Inc., says, “I`ve always tried to live with the following simple rule: Don`t do what you wouldn`t feel comfortable reading about in the newspapers the next day.” That`s a good standard all of us should keep.”

“Remember that success is just 15 percent product knowledge and it’s 85 percent people knowledge.”

“Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly bigger man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.”

“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves—to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.”

“One of the quickest ways to gain credibility with an individual, a group, or an audience is to borrow it from someone who already has credibility with them.”