“This is the moment — this is the most important moment right now. Which is: We are about contribution. That’s what our job is. It’s not about impressing people. It’s not about getting the next job. It’s about contributing something.”

Imagine Martin Luther King saying, ‘I have a dream … But I don’t know if the others will buy it.’

The major difference between the ‘best’ and the ‘average’ is that the ‘best’ get as much pleasure from practice as performance.

It’s not a question of how much power you can hoard for yourself, but how much you can give away.

When you make a mistake, throw your hands in the air and say “How fascinating!”

My job [is] to awaken possibility in other people. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it. If they’re not shining you get to ask this question: “Who am I being that my children’s eyes are not shining?”

Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.

It is the tuning of the universe… It’s as if at the beginning of the symphony God turns up the volume just a tiny bit.

I have a definition of success.

If you make a mistake, celebrate.

The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful.

Who am I being that my players’ eyes are not shining?

The job of the leader is to speak to the possibility.

I make myself a relentless architect of the possibilities of human beings.

We can replace the narratives that hold us back by inventing wiser stories, free from childish fears, and, in doing so, disperse long-held psychological stumbling blocks.

how absurd human beings are and how magnificent.

Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you’re doing it.

By the time I got to Harvard, I feel like I knew who I was, and my job there was to throw as much against the wall as possible, to see what would stick.

I didn’t know how we were going to get jobs out of NAFTA, but I tend to be suspicious of these things, like NAFTAs and WTOs and so on.

While I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively high number of jobs created in April, the fact is that job creation during this recovery period has significantly lagged both historical experience in recovery, and the projections of the Bush Administration.

Once you do lose a job, there are not a lot of social supports for you. You lose health insurance because we have this absurd system in America where health insurance is usually tied to employment. Your income dips. And that’s when you get into selling the house.

Happiness does not come from football awards. It’s terrible to correlate happiness with football. Happiness comes from a good job, being able to feed your wife and kids. I don’t dream football, I dream the American dream – two cars in a garage, be a happy father.

No one wanted a job. No one could hold a job. You tend to see those going hand in hand.

If you’re standing in the manure pile, it’s somebody’s job to mention the stink.

Diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.