“Life is now in session. Are you present?”

“Have to sow excellent seeds to have an excellent life. Must start with sowing excellent thoughts.”

“Successful people are good in four areas: relationships, equipping, attitude, and leadership

“Everyone is a leader because everyone influences someone.”

“deal positively with your weaknesses.”

“If you don’t like the crop you are reaping, check the seed you are sowing.”

“The key to working smarter is knowing the difference between motion and direction. In the final analysis, results are what matter; attendance and activity don’t.”

“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.”

“There is no future in any job. The future lies in the person who holds the job.”

“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!”

“Lazy people don’t succeed.”

“To become a 360-Degree Leader, you will have to pay a price. You will have to give up other opportunities in order to lead. You will have to sacrifice some personal goals for the sake of others. You will have to get out of your comfort zone and do things you’ve never done before. You will have to keep learning and growing when you don’t feel like it. You will have to repeatedly put others ahead of yourself. And if you desire to be a really good leader, you will have to do these things without fanfare or complaint.”

“A person who knows how may always have a job, but the person who knows why will always be his boss.”

“The most important personal-growth phrase you will ever hear a good leader say to you is “follow me.”

“Education makes all the difference.”