Quotes

Now with God's help, I shall become myself.

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time – none, zero.

Winning has a price. And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled. I challenged people when they don't want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates came after me. They didn't endure all the things that I endured. Once you join the team, you live at a certain standard that I play the game, and I wasn't gonna take anything less. Now, if that means I have to go out there and get in your a** a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates, the one thing about Michael Jordan was, he never asked me to do something that he didn't do... When people see this, they're gonna say, 'Well, he wasn't really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant.' Well, that's you, because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well. I don't have to do this. I'm only doing it because it is who I am. That's how I played the game. That was my mentality.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.

Leadership is communicating people's worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.

What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is, but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be, and could be, he will become what he ought to be, and should be.

I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

We will either find a way, or make one.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

Love is immortality, or rather, it is divine substance. Those who love know no death, because love makes life reborn in divinity.

I think it's roughly right that the market is efficient, which makes it very hard to beat merely by being an intelligent investor. But I don’t think it’s totally efficient at all. And the difference between being totally efficient and somewhat efficient leaves an enormous opportunity for people like us to get these unusual records. It’s efficient enough, so it’s hard to have a great investment record. But it’s by no means impossible. Nor is it something that only a very few people can do. The top three or four percent of the investment management world will do fine.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life

I can't relate to lazy people. We don't speak the same language. I don't understand you. I don't want to understand you.

If you focus on results, you will never get change. If you focus on change, you will get results.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

I was unable to enter into ordinary relationships. I therefore concluded that it was my task to be extraordinary.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather than the prize

Every block of marble has a statue inside of it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free

I am not smarter than anybody else, but I can outwork you – and my key to success for you, or anybody else is to make sure you are the first one in there every day and the last one to leave.

My definition of failure is regret

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years be trying to get other people interested in you

Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.

I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

There may be people more talented than you but there is no excuse for anyone to work harder than you.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

I believe in every shot I hit that I can pull it off. It's just, I guess, my mind-set. I've always believed that.

I directed our focus less to the prize of victory than to the process of improving — obsessing, perhaps, about the quality of our execution and the content of our thinking; that is, our actions and attitude. I knew if I did that, winning would take care of itself.

If you go out looking for friends, you're going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you'll find them everywhere.

It shall be done

People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds. I don't think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicts your idea today. The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a well formed point of view, but it means you should consider your point of view as temporary. What trait signifies someone who is wrong a lot of the time? Someone obsessed with details that only support one point of view. If someone can’t climb out of the details, and see the bigger picture from multiple angles, they’re often wrong most of the time.

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

Good design is as little design as possible.

My hunger is not for success, it is for excellence, because when you attain excellence, success just naturally follows.

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, good companies survive them, great companies are improved by them.

A man who is not on fire is nothing.

After dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest person in England. But after dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest person in England.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

The art of storytelling is incredibly important. And many—maybe even most of the entrepreneurs who come to talk to us can’t tell the story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that’s how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

It has come to my attention that people of accomplishment, rarely sit back and let things happen to them, they went out and happened to things.

There [are] a couple of things that seem to be a pattern match for people who are right a lot. One is that people who are right a lot listen a lot. Another one is that people who are right a lot change their mind a lot.... People say that you should change your mind when the data changes; but I change my mind even when the data doesn't change, because I reanalyze the situation every day and sometimes I just come to a better analysis. And I think actually what I said yesterday I don't believe anymore.... You should not change your mind on your principles or your ideals or your vision. You should be stubborn on those things. But most of what we do every day is very tactical...and you should be very, very focused on the details and on changing your mind very frequently. And then finally--and this is the one that humans are the worst at--is [that] you have to have deep convictions, but then always work to disconfirm them. And you won't usually. Most of your convictions are going to be right for long periods of time, but you should always be saying 'Here's something I really, really believe is true, and then am I wrong about this? Am I wrong about this?'. And then look for ways to disconfirm. The natural human behavior is confirmation bias.

Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right

What animates [mountain] climbers is not a death wish, but a life wish, a desire to truly live—fully, intensely, completely. I have never met a group of people more truly alive—physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. Rather than courting danger for its own sake, they do so as a means of deepening and enriching their experience.

Be guided by beauty. I really mean that. Pretty much everything I've done has had an aesthetic component, at least to me. Now you might think 'well, building a company that's trading bonds, what's so aesthetic about that?' But what's aesthetic about it is doing it right. Getting the right kind of people, and approaching the problem, and doing it right [...] it's a beautiful thing to do something right.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Of what use is the outward journey if an equally difficult inward journey does not accompany it

The idea that life is a series of adversities and each one is an opportunity to behave well instead of badly, is a very very good idea.

First of all, I must explain that this young man, Alyosha, was not a fanatic, and, in my opinion at least, was not even a mystic. I may as well give my full opinion from the beginning. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and that he adopted the monastic life was simply because at that time it struck him, so to say, as the ideal escape for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness to the light of love.

He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education... but internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being: humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve your fellow men - qualities within the reach of every human soul.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

All of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that looked beautiful would fly the same way.

From the beginning, I wanted to be the best. I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best. I never needed any external forces to motivate me.

Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.

When I have the chance to guard Michael Jordan, I want to guard him. I want him. It's the ultimate challenge.

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

Men are not made from easy victories but based on great defeats.

The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

If you have a ten-year plan of how to get somewhere, you should ask yourself, 'Why can't I do this in six months?'

Intense interest in any subject is indispensable if you’re really going to excel in it.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs most is people who have come alive

I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you.

Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to discover personal attributes, which he termed 'good qualities,' in people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love, and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes for loving them.

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work

I grew up with an ambition and determination without which I would have been a good deal happier. I thought a lot and developed the far-away look of a dreamer, for it was always the distant heights which fascinated me and drew me to them in spirit. I was not sure what could be accomplished by means of tenacity and little else, but the target was set high and each rebuff only saw me more determined to see at least one major dream through to its fulfillment.

The reading habit is most valuable in life. I mean by that the practice of using a little time, say half an hour a day, in the systematic reading of worthwhile literature. The mind is opened to precious fields of thought; the achievements of the ages become ours; even the future takes form. As the mind and spirit are fed by well chosen reading, comfort, peace and understanding come to the soul. Those who have not tried it, have missed a keen and easily accessible joy. Moreover a person who engages in such a regular daily reading, if only a few minutes a day, in the course of a few years becomes a learned man. But it must be a regular daily habit. … Some of the best educated men that I have ever met have never been to college but have acquired the habit of daily reading of good books for a few minutes a day.

With the Bulls I've learned that the most effective way to forge a winning team is to call on the players’ need to connect with something larger than themselves,” Jackson said. “Even for those who don’t consider themselves ‘spiritual’ in a conventional sense, creating a successful team—whether it’s an NBA champion or a record-setting sales force—is essentially a spiritual act. It requires the individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for the greater good so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of the parts.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into an exhausting pace and then at the end who can punish himself even more

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

His goal in life was to convince us that we could be great. And he did, and we were. That’s why he was such a great leader.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly, can also suffer great sorrow; but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them.

Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation from the public, but because it is fun to program.

Reading is the royal road to intellectual eminence...Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them. They are the breathings of the great souls of past times. Genius is not embalmed in them, but lives in them perpetually.

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love them.

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.

Under conditions of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.

The key is not the 'will to win'... everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

No matter how hard you train, Somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, Somebody will run harder. No matter how much you want it, Somebody will want it more. I am Somebody.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

If you measure yourself by career, money, I've got bad news: there's serendipity in the world. The currency of life is the people that you love and that care for you.

Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it’s you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating.

Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.

The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there.' Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.

I’m not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I’ve reached that state.