“For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”

“What energy!' I thought. 'Man has conquered everything, and destroyed millions of plants, yet this one won't submit.”

“El poeta William Arthur Ward sugiere que la clave para el éxito es: Creer cuando otros dudan. Planificar mientras que los demás juegan. Estudiar cuando los demás duermen. Decidir cuando los demás postergan. Prepararse cuando los demás sueñan despiertos. Empezar cuando los demás lo dejan para otro día. Trabajar cuando los demás desean. Ahorrar cuando los demás desperdician. Escuchar cuando los demás hablan. Sonreír cuando los demás fruncen el ceño. Elogiar cuando los demás critican. Persistir cuando los demás se dan por vencidos.”

“The laws of the universe are never broken. Your mistake is to think that the little regularities we have observed on one planet for a few hundred years are the real unbreakable laws; whereas they are only the remote results which the true laws bring about more often than not; as a kind of accident.”

“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn't stand it. My mother couldn't stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read but we didn't know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn't care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn't hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.” 

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”

“Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give.”

“Success can locate and visit you even if you are static wherever you are... But you are responsible for constructing the roads... Go, make the roads!”

“Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.”

“Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”

“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.”

“It is not only the viability and variety of the seed that makes the harvest look plumpy. Sometimes, the soil must value the value of the seed. When the soil is not supportive, the seed's value becomes a waste!”

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”

“Organized people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.” 

“This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”