“What are stumbling blocks and defeat to the weak and vacillating are but stepping stones to victory to the determined soul.”

The golden rule for every business man is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’

The Creator has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.

Pessimism has never done anything but tear down and destroy what optimism has built up.

The quality of your work, in the long run, is the deciding factor on how much your services are valued by the world.

Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

Our destiny changes with our thought; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.

You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.

Obstacles will look large or small to you according to whether you are large or small.

What keeps so many people back is simply unwillingness to pay the price, to make the exertion, the effort to sacrifice their ease and comfort.

Make it a life-rule to give your best to whatever passes through your hands. Stamp it with your manhood. Let superiority be your trademark.

Conquer yourself and you can conquer everything else.

The best books are those which lift us to a higher plane where we breathe a purer atmosphere.

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.

Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say “No,” though all the world say “Yes.

It is the youth who sees a great opportunity hidden in just these simple services, who sees a very uncommon situation, a humble position, who gets on in the world.

Put the uncommon effort into the common task… make it large by doing it in a great way.

Fear and fatigue block the mind. Face both, then courage and confidence flows into you.

I learned to produce whether I wanted to or not. It would be easy to say oh, I have writer’s block, oh, I have to wait for my muse. I don’t. Chain that muse to your desk and get the job done.

Kids have what I call a built-in hypocrisy antenna that comes up and blocks out what you’re saying when you’re being a hypocrite.

The obstacles in our path are not blocking us-they are redirecting us. Their purpose is not to interfere with our happiness; it is to point us toward new routes to our happiness, new possibilities, new doorways.

You try to become the character that you’re working with. So for me, I try to block out the cameras and try to trick my mind that this is actually happening.

the innate respect for human lives, the intense humanity that is our heritage, the African race, united under one federal government, will emerge not as just another world bloc to flaunt its wealth and strength.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

They told me to take a streetcar named Desire and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at – Elysian Fields!