It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

Much of India that we dream of still lies ahead of us: housing, power, water and sanitation for all; bank accounts and insurance for every citizen; connected and prosperous villages; and, smart and sustainable cities.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

When I checked into SEAL Team One many years ago, one of the things that I noticed was there was this old guy, who was younger than I am today, who I decided that I was going to be like. I wanted to emulate what he was doing, and one of those things was he got to work before anybody else.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

I do believe in self-help.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

Show me a poorly uniformed troop and I’ll show you a poorly uniformed leader.

I wish everyone well, but you need to focus on yourself. You need to stop putting your hand out. Everyone wants hand outs. Everyone wants things for free. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got go through the struggle, and you’ve got to get it.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

No evil propensity of the human heart is so powerful that it may not be subdued by discipline.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

I think it’s my responsibility, as a person of influence… to sometimes try to do what I can.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument… an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

Those who intend on becoming great should love neither themselves nor their own things, but only what is just, whether it happens to be done by themselves or others.

I never smoke to excess – that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career.

I’ve learned through my own relationship with God that He’s not expecting me to be perfect; He wants me to do my best to be in His will and take steps of faith as He leads me, through His Word and the promptings He speaks to my heart.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

Check your ego at the door. The ego can be the great success inhibitor. It can kill opportunities, and it can kill success.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

I’m chasing perfection.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows or all he sees.

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

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.