I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Anger cannot be dishonest.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

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.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

The truth is, I’m just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challenges in his life.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out. Don’t get startled; don’t get frustrated. If you can say the word ‚good,‘ guess what? It means you’re still alive. It means you’re still breathing.

When you are younger, you want to do everything, and you go haywire.

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

I’ve always been very one-sided about science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

I like to work.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

You might be tough, but you can only be so tough for so long, you know what I mean? The brain can only take so much damage. The body can only take so much damage.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.

My pride fell with my fortunes.

The important thing is to be in love with something.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‚Ego‘.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I’ve done that sort of thing in my life, but I’ve always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don’t know why. Because they’re harder. They’re much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you’ve completely failed.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.