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To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

If you focus on your values, then you'll improve the "balance" between your business and personal lives. Give me a break. Focusing on your values may provide you with meaning, but it won't simplify things. You'll just discover even more stuff that's important to you. You can do anything -- but not everything. The universe is full of creative projects that are waiting to be done. So, if you really care about quality of life, if you want to relax, then don't focus on values. Just control your aspirations. That will simplify things. Learning to set boundaries is incredibly difficult for most people.

Much of the stress that people feel doesn't come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they've started.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.

The problem here is that all people are not created equal, though America is driven by this noble falsehood, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Stirring and instructive nonsense, but nonsense nevertheless. We aren't equal. We don't all have the same capabilities, the same chances, or the same luck. We don't even have the same inclinations.

Here's the idea: Everybody thinks he or she might be president or CEO. Here's the benefit: Everybody works hard. Here's the problem: Many of us will not become president or CEO. Many of us will become bitter.

If we are not at the top of our field, then we are forced to come to one of two agonizing conclusions: We haven't worked hard enough, or we've been cheated.

I think that most Americans take both positions, which leaves them either acutely disappointed in themselves, or furious at anybody who has surpassed them.

Differentiation is crucial for advancement. So is brotherhood and the desire to work for the greater good. Huge wealth is a problem and a responsibility.

What's the easiest way to get rid of emotional tension? You can do it in less than a minute. Just diminish your vision. Revise it so it's easier to attain - or abandon it altogether. However, when you relieve emotional tension, you also compromise creative tension. We call this the structure of compromise, or the structure of mediocrity. You could explain all the mediocrity in the world by this very simple dynamic: people don't understand the difference between creative tension and emotional tension, and so diminish their vision to relieve that tension.

Another way to relieve emotional tension is by denying current reality. People who take this approach walk around pretending things are fine when they're not. They might say, "We're living our vision today, everything's perfect, there are no problems." And then they step into a huge pit that they couldn't see because they're denying current reality.

The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

The deepest personal defeat suffered by human beings is constituted by the difference between what one was capable of becoming and what one has in fact become.

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance next time.

It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that know neither victory nor defeat.

What you want is better than, not optimal. Your job is to do something today that's better than what you did yesterday. And to do something tomorrow that's better than what you did today.

Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

Everything can look like a failure in the middle.

The great Western Disease lies in the phrase, "I will be happy when..."

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine...it's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Yesbutters don�t just kill ideas.
They kill companies, even entire industries.
The yesbutters have all the answers. Yesbut we�re different.
Yesbut we can�t afford it.
Yesbut our business doesn�t need it.
Yesbut we couldn�t sell it to our workforce.
Yesbut we can�t explain it to our shareholders.
Yesbut let�s wait and see.
All the answers. All the wrong answers.

Whynotters move Companies.

The next time you�re in a meeting, look around and identify
the yesbutters, the notnowers and the whynotters.
God bless the whynotters. They dare to dream. And to act.
By acting, they achieve what others see as unachievable.
Why not, indeed?

He who have never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers – it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small.

If I had select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down 70 times and get off the floor saying, ‘Here comes number 71!

Opportunists are humble enough to realize that the random forces of nature are more powerful than themselves. That these random forces often conspire to make things ridiculously easy just as often as they conspire to create hurricanes and earthquakes. Most people realize that a lot depends on being in the right place at the right time. Very few realize that this situation is not the outcome of hard work or trying to identify and move to hotspots. It is the outcome of a cultivated ability at recognizing when you are randomly in the right place at the right time (which also implies that there must be a certain amount of deliberate randomness in your wandering through life).

Excellent performers judge themselves differently than most people do. They're more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies. Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great or poorly or okay.

By contrast, the best performers judge themselves against a standard that's relevant for what they're trying to achieve. Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best; sometimes they compare it with the performance of competitors they're facing or expect to face; sometimes they compare it with the best known performance by anyone in the field.

Any of those can make sense; the key, as in all deliberate practice, is to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits. Research confirms what common sense tells us, that too high a standard is discouraging and not very instructive, while too low a standard produces no advancement.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Talent only matures when harnessed within a personality that is capable of self-improvement. And talent, ironically, has a nasty knack of protecting the talented from the urge to self-improve.

The opposite of success is not failure, but mediocrity. To achieve big successes, you need to take big risks; if you take little or no risks, mediocrity is guaranteed.

True greatness has never been achieved in 8 hours a day, five days a week, with a four week vacation per year.

Although the cost of excessive caution is harder to measure than that of recklessness, it is no less real.

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. TALENT will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. GENIUS will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. EDUCATION will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “Press On,” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.