Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

One of the things I’ve told men over and over and over and over is if you’re being rejected by all the women that you approach, it’s not the women!

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

There are many things that happen every day that we could murmur about if we let ourselves go there. But they really aren’t worth the effort it takes to get upset and gripe about it.

I am just one human being.

Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

Political courage is not political suicide.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

Where much is expected from an individual, he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

From the moment I open my eyes, I’m trying to free my body. I’m trying to get looser, more flexible, to gain control. Movement is medicine to me.

I’ve learned not to look at reviews. Early on, I did. I was always curious.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it’s just noise that can be a distraction.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

What I love best in life is new starts.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

I’m not the most patient of people.

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

Adventures are to the adventurous.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.