“We don’t get to pick our talents or IQ. But we do choose our character. In fact, we create it every time we make choices—to cop out or dig out of a hard situation, to bend the truth or stand under the weight of it, to take the easy money or pay the price.”

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

“John Callen: “La habilidad más buscada, desde director general hasta el menor puesto, es la habilidad de comunicarse con la gente. La persona que pueda hacerlo en los negocios siempre será solicitada”

“Experience isn’t the best teacher—evaluated experience is.”

“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!”

“Your attitude is like the minds paintbrush. It can paint everything in bright, vibrant colors-creating a masterspiece.”

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.”

“The happiest people are those who have invested their time in others. The unhappiest people are those who wonder how the world is going to make them happy.”

“UCLA psychology professor emeritus Albert Mehrabian discovered that face-to-face communication can be broken down into three components: words, tone of voice, and body language.”

“If you talk to a man in the language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

“Education makes all the difference.”

“Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.”

“More than anything else, what keeps a person going in the midst of adversity is having a sense of purpose. It is the fuel that powers persistence.”

“A problem is something you can do something about. If you can't do something about it, then it's not a problem. It's a predicament. That means it's something that must be coped with, endured.”

“The company owner doesn't need to win. The best idea does.”