“Every bit of learning is a little death. Every bit of new information challenges a previous conception, forcing it to dissolve into chaos before it can be reborn as something better. Sometimes such deaths virtually destroy us.”

True thinking is rare – just like true listening.

It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city.

To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value.

That’s poetic in its malevolence.

Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

What you aim at determines what you see.

Worthlessness is the default condition.

Consciousness is a mystery that faces the mystery of potential and transforms it into actuality. We do that with every choice we make. Our choices determine the destiny of the world. By making a choice, you alter the structure of reality.

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.

It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word.

In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

Other men’s pains are easily borne.

Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

I was born in a lovely white house with a garden.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.

The things that are important to me – being a mother, a businesswoman, an activist – are all things that were borne out of great passion.

I have learned that champions aren’t just born; champions can be made when they embrace and commit to life-changing positive habits.

Spiritual life doesn’t make you a good person; you ARE a good person, you are a holy being when you are born. What spiritual life does is remind us that this is who we really are.