Great Throughts Treasury

"The key to life is a balance in all things, including the perceptual filters of association and disassociation. We can associate or disassociate from anything we want. They key is to associate consciously, so it helps us. We learned that we are not born with beliefs, that they can change."

"Directions cause destinations."

"Nothing is inherently good or bad. Value is how we represent it to ourselves."

"You can persuade better through agreement than through conquest."

"Your values are your belief systems about right and wrong, good and bad. Our values are the things we all fundamentally need to move toward... Our values change when we change goals or self-image... There is no real success except in keeping your basic values."

"If we represent to ourselves that things aren't going to work, they won't."

"People are not lazy. They simply have impotent goals."

"The greatest gift that extraordinarily successful people have over the average person is their ability to get themselves to take action."

"We all teach what we most need to learn."

"Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it's who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment."

"I believe life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life's greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve. This level of resolve can move mountains, but it must be constant and consistent."

"Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more."

"The strongest force in the universe is a human being living consistently with his identity."

"It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny."

"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives."