Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

You don’t have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future, too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to speak.

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.

It is stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts prosecution.

Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall be given a square deal.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

The golden rule for every business man is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that setbacks and griefs which endure help us in our march forward.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against our faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by tellings against ourselves.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance between chaos and community.

You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.

Be bold. If you're going to make an error, make a doozy, and don't be afraid to hit the ball.

In school, you are given the lesson first. One the street, you're given the mistake first and then it's up to you to find the lesson, if you ever find it.

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

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.

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.

We ought not to let either our joy at their faults or our grief at their success be idle, but in either case we ought to reflect, how we may become better than them by avoiding their errors, and by imitating their virtues not come short of them.

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

The common denominator of happy and successful people is that they spend their time with other happy and successful people.