Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, ‚I release the need for this in my life‘.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.

Make yourself necessary to somebody.

Erudition – that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic – is taught in the schools; but where is the more important quality, character, taught? Nowhere in particular. There is no authorized training for children in character.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

Remind yourself that the greatest technique for bringing peace into your life is to always choose being kind when you have a choice between being right or being kind.

Alas! You complain that your soul is out of tune. Then ask the Master to tune the heart-strings.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

You can’t go backward in life.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.

I want to appeal to everyone. Because I’m not saying I’m the best, but we the best.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Before all else, be armed.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

What nobler employment, or more valuable to the state, than that of the man who instructs the rising generation?

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

See, that’s why Barack’s running: to end the war in Iraq responsibly – to build an economy that lifts every family, to make sure health care is available for every American – and to make sure that every child in this nation has a world-class education all the way from preschool to college.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

The best teacher is very interactive.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

The only shame is to have none.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

Reversing your treatment of the man you have wronged is better than asking his forgiveness.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Never mistake motion for action.

Mine is better than ours.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.