“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

“If you are interested in success, it’s easy to set your standards in terms of other people’s accomplishments and then let other people measure you by those standards. But the standards you set for yourself are always more important. They should be higher than the standards anyone else would set for you, because in the end you have to live with yourself, and judge yourself, and feel good about yourself. And the best way to do that is to live up to your highest potential. So set your standards high and keep them high, even if you think no one else is looking. Somebody out there will always notice, even if it’s just you.”

“The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him but the number of people he serves.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.”

“Haga una lista de al menos cinco pero no más de diez metas.) Ahora identifique los que requerirán la participación o la cooperación de los demás. En estas actividades, su capacidad de liderazgo redundará en eficacia.

“NBA superstar David Robinson remarked, “I think any player will tell you that individual accomplishments help your ego, but if you don’t win, it makes for a very, very long season. It counts more that the team has played well.”

“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.

“Inspirar a otros para hacer un mejor trabajo es el logro de un líder.”

“There are two things that are most difficult to get people to do: to think, and to do things in order of importance.”

“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 can learn that, then no matter what happens to you, you can weather the storm and build on the good you find in any situation.”

“Los educadores toman algo simple y lo vuelven complicado. Los comunicadores toman algo complicado y lo hacen simple.

“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”

“When you like people and treat them like individuals who have value, you begin to develop influence with them. You develop trust.”