The ability to influence people without irritating them is the most profitable skill you can learn.

The question, 'Who ought to be boss?' is like asking 'Who ought to be the tenor in a quartet?' Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Speak not, but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, may be prolonged to that point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

Teach your child to hold his tongue; he'll learn fast enough to speak.

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

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.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.

Read, read, read. Never stop reading. And when you can't read anymore… write.

If you want a new idea, read an old book.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Without properly kept accounts it is impossible to maintain truth in its pristine purity.

The better you are at communicating negotiating, and handling your fear of rejection, the easier life is.

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

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Compromise is the best and cheapest lawyer.

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.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.

Wherever there is injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.

Religion is a great force—the only real motive force in the world; but what you fellows don't understand is that you must get a man through his own religion and not through yours.