“The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.”

Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others.

When it comes to betting on yourself… you’re a chicken-livered coward if you hesitate.

…the incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation’s destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

The things that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach of almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.

Acting without thinking is like shooting without aiming.

If the deal isn’t good for the other party, it isn’t good for you.

The men who have done big things are those who were not afraid to attempt big things, who were not afraid to risk failure in order to gain success.

It is the hard-boiled employer, not the soft-hearted species, that incites most of our strikes and does most ot endanger the harmonious progress of democracy.

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity, and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain.

Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other fellow will in the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.

It is not a case of whether we want to wash our hands of Europe or want to help her to regain her feet. The troubles of Europe have been laid on our doorstep, so to speak, and will plague us, if we do nothing to cure them, whether we like it or not.

There are two brands of discontent: the brand that merely fosters greed and snarling and back-biting, and the brand that inspires greater and greater effort to reach the desired goal. Which is your brand?

There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive.

Next to the dog, the wastebasket is your best friend.

Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one’s own inferiority. It is a mental cancer.

Grit and self-control are related, but they’re not the same thing.

A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.

If the ego is not regularly and repeatedly dissolved in the unbounded hyperspace of the Transcendent Other, there will always be slow drift away from the sense of self as part of nature’s larger whole. The ultimate consequence of this drift is the fatal ennui that now permeates Western Civilization.

Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.

What destroys us most effectively is not a malign fate but our own capacity for self-deception and for degrading our own best self.

Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair; these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

My dad was not super-intentional in his parenting. He was very self-absorbed. I won’t say mean or selfish per se, but very self-absorbed. I think he was just thinking out loud.

Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.