Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
No man can stand on top because he is put there.
Roll with the punches.
What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him.
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
I'm not here just to make a living, I'm here to make a difference.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
Do not wait ; the time will never be "just right". Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
If I'm ever on a life-support system I choose to be unplugged, but not until Im down to a size eight!
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
If you realize how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought
A weak man has doubts before a decision, a strong man has them afterwards.
Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster.
If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavor to leave the life which you have imagined, you will you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life - it goes on.
Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really ? True effectiveness requires balance.
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
He who never made a mistake never made a discovery.
Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
To be successful, you must decide exactly what you want to accomplish, then resolve to pay the price to get it.
The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a persons determination.
Either you run the day or the day runs you.
Every time we open our mouths, men look into our minds.
I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have the capacity at the beginning.
Many people may listen, but few people actually hear.
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
If the student thinks he is the spirit, he will be a better student. If the lawyer thinks he is the spirit, he will be a better lawyer, and so on.
If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man , but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask.
Strike while the iron is hot.
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
The secret of success is to do common things uncommonly well.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
You're on the road to success when you realize that failure is only a detour.
Happiness itself does not stay -- only moments of happiness do.
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon- instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.
Almost any idea is good if a man has ability and is willing to work hard. The best idea is worthless if the creator is a loafer and ineffective.
How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
It not knowing what to do, it's doing what you know.
Tell me and I forget , show me and I remember , involve me and I understand.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much the old man had learned in 7 years.
All resources are not obvious, great managers find and develop available talent.
Respect the past in the full measure of its desserts, but do not make the mistake of confusing it with the present nor seek in it the ideals of the future.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
No pain, No gain.
Giving people a little more than they expect is a good way to get back more than you'd expect.
Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
What is strength without a double share of wisdom ?
People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals - that is, goals that do not inspire them.
Now is the time. Needs are great, but your possibilities are greater.
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners.
Yes, you can be a dreamer and a doer too, if you will remove one word from your vocabulary : impossible.
Actions speak louder than words.
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
If not us, who, if not now, when ?
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
A wise man makes his own decisions , an ignorant man follows the public opinion.
Authentic leaders have absorbed the fundamental fact of existence -- that you can't get around life's inherent contradictions. The leadership mind is spacious. It has ample room for the ambiguities of the world, for conflicting feelings, and for contradictory ideas. I believe that the central leadership attribute is the ability to manage polarity.
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going!
The Athenians, alarmed at the internal decay of their Republic, asked Demosthenes what to do. His reply: Do not do what you are doing now.
It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow.
What you cannot enforce, Do not command.
Stand upon the self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand, knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.
Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilizationWithout it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility.
Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music.
One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus ; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
Self delusion is pulling in your stomach when you step on the scales.
With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.
We are made for loving. If we don't love, we will be like plants without water.
It is not the job of the general to be winning. It is his job to win.
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.
God is present in every jiva, there is no other god besides that. Who serves jiva serves god indeed.
The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.
You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success -- or are they holding you back ?
There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.
Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.