The book you don’t read won’t help.

We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

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

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

My reputation grows with every failure.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

The only superstition I have is that I must start a new book on the same day that I finish the last one, even if it’s just a few notes in a file. I dread not having work in progress.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

The Bible illustrated by Dore occupied many of my hours – and I think probably gave me many nightmares.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office.

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?

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Don’t bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. If you don’t feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace. If you need money, go to the bank, but not the marketplace.

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.

I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

We can never make ourselves better by trying… praying more or longer, studying more of the Word, performing good works, etc. Don’t get me wrong… it’s not bad to do any of these things. In fact, it’s good. It’s just that doing them in God’s power is the only way those things will have any real and lasting effect in our lives.

I love great journalism. I appreciate it. I love a good, you know, I love good news stories. I love great books. I love great articles. I appreciate them so much, and they’ve been part of my education as a woman.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

Things do not change; we change.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

How well he’s read, to reason against reading!

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

The trained mind is a rich mind.

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.

I can’t do nothing just a little.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.