It’s just human nature to try and figure things out. So, when we’re in the midst of a situation, we usually try to reason our way through it.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

Don’t find fault, find a remedy.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

Judas betrayed Jesus. Lady Red betrayed John Dillinger. Those things happen.

The flesh, or human nature, is generally lazy and self-centered.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

And so I think that the idea of America working with other countries to solve problems is good for us, and it is part of digging us out of the ‚my way or the highway‘ approach that was evident in the previous eight years.

Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

I gave ‚em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

Nature is not human hearted.

Desire is the essence of a man.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.