Who changes his condition changes fortune.

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

The very key to our success has been our ability, foremost among nations, to preserve our lasting values by making change work for us rather than against us.

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.

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

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Master of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

A fair character is a fair fortune.

Those disputing, contradicting, and confuting people are generally unfortunate in their affairs. They get victory, sometimes, but they never get good will, which would be of more use to them.

The man who is truly good and wise will bear with dignity whatever fortune sends, and will always make the best of his circumstances.

An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and teachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence.

Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.

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.

In reading lives of great people, I found the first victory won was over themselves.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

The stability of the internal medium is a primary condition for the freedom and independence of certain living bodies in relation to the environment surrounding them.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Know yourself. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.