“Understand that you can’t achieve your dreams if you don’t connect with people who guide you to improve on upon the skills you have.”

“Un lucru a săpat rădăcini adânci în sufletul meu: credinţa că morala stă la baza tuturor lucrurilor şi că adevărul este substanţa întregii moralităţi. Astfel că adevărul a devenit singurul meu scop. El a devenit din ce în ce mai important pentru mine, iar sensurile pe care i le-am dat au devenit din ce în ce mai largi.”

“Adversity relieves people of vanity and egotism. It discourages selfishness by proving that no one can succeed without the cooperation of others.”

“Everything worth having has a definite price.”

“The facade of grief may be indifference, preoccupation, anger, cheerfulness, or any variety of emotions. But if we try to understand it, we may learn how to cope with it.” 

“It should be one of the tests,” the old woman said. “Humans are almost always lonely.”

“A CHECKLIST FOR CHANGE Below are the questions you should review before attempting changes within an organization. When the questions can be answered with a yes, change tends to be easier. Questions that can only be answered with no (or maybe) usually indicate that change will be difficult. YES NO   ____ ____ Will this change benefit the followers? ____ ____ Is this change compatible with the purpose of the organization? ____ ____ Is this change specific and clear? ____ ____ Are the top 20 percent (the influencers) in favor of this change? ____ ____ Is it possible to test this change before making a total commitment to it? ____ ____ Are physical, financial, and human resources available to make this change? ____ ____ Is this change reversible? ____ ____ Is this change the next obvious step? ____ ____ Does this change have both short- and long-range benefits? ____ ____ Is the leadership capable of bringing about this change? ____ ____ Is the timing right?”

“Today Matters People create success in their lives by focusing on today. It may sound trite, but today is the only time you have. It’s too late for yesterday. And you can’t depend on tomorrow. That’s why today matters.”

“I shall stick to our vow: never, never under any circumstances, to say anything unbecoming of the other...The trouble, of course, is that most successful men are prone to some form of vanity. There comes a stage in their lives when they consider it permissible to be egotistic and to brag to the public at large about their unique achievements.”

“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers”

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”

“He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite.”

“Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ”

“In the world in which we live, we give most attention to satisfying the appetites of the body and practically none to the soul . . . We become fat physically and materially, while spiritually we are lean, weak, and anemic.”

“I simply want to tell the story of my numerous experiments with Truth, and as my life consists of nothing but those experiments; it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography.”