What I wanted was to be allowed to do the thing in the world that I did best, which I believed then and believe now, is the greatest privilege there is. When I did that, success found me.

Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, nevertheless they give up their lives to that little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it, and then it’s gone. But to surrender what you are, and live without belief - that’s more terrible than dying—more terrible than dying young.

There are only two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it.

Consensus: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: 'I stand for consensus?

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favor of the belief which he finds in himself.

Man is a mental being, and to know this is the first step on the road to freedom, for as long as you believe yourself to be primarily physical, you will remain in bondage, that is to say, to your own habits of thought, for there is no other bondage.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

Unless you believe you will not understand.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

For you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within solitude of his own heart.

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

Freedom ultimately means the right of the other people to do things you don’t approve of.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.

You find out the necessity of Liberty as you find out the necessity of air—by not having enough of it.

Freedom is to be free from restraint and violence from others.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Before a man can accomplish anything of an enduring nature in the world, he must first of all acquire some measure of success in the management of his own mind.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

The planet does not need more “successful people.” The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he as imagined, he will meet with success unexpectedly in common hours.

Unsuccessful people make decisions based on current situations. Successful people make decisions based on where they want to be.

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year.

A series of failures may culminate in the best possible result.