“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.”

We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

A stupid man behaves stupidly, not because he wants to, or tries to, or is motivated to, but simply because he is what he is.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

It isn’t normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.

In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.

Perhaps adjustment and stabilization, while good because it cuts your pain, is also bad because development towards a higher ideal ceases?

The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

Be independent of the good opinion of other people.

Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.

What you don’t know has power over you; knowing it brings it under your control, and makes it subject to your choice. Ignorance makes real choice impossible.

Creativity is a characteristic given to all human beings at birth.

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.

If you can believe in something great, then you can achieve something great.

Without loyalty, you won’t accomplish anything.

Anything played wrong twice in a row is the beginning of an arrangement.

The beginning is always today.

The heart is the chief feature of a functioning mind.

It’s always been inside of you and now it’s time to let it through.

Sometimes if you want to achieve something great, there will be curveballs. You just have to dodge them every once in a while.

Sometimes in life you don’t always feel like a winner, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a winner.