Action without vision is only passing time, vision without action is merely day dreaming, but vision with action can change the world.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

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.

I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was a good thought, the second, a good word; and the third, a good deed.

Everything good is costly and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty.

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take for better, for worse, as his portion; that, though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others—it only changes yours.

I have to face life with a newly found passion. I must rediscover the irresistible will to learn, to live and to love.

Change how you see and see how you change.

Maturity is the ability to live in peace with that which we cannot change.

Have to and get to—both are choices. One is negative and one is positive. Choose the right one and it can change your life.

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

Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.

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.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence—that will enable you to attain the success you seek.

If you can imagine it you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.

A man, to carry on a successful business, must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. A man can cultivate this faculty only by an appreciation for the finer things in life.

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.

So many of our dreams at first seem impossible. Then they seem improbable. And then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.

As leaders we are not only responsible for harvesting our own success, but for cultivating the success of the next generation.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl of be found in the dark folds of life.

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.

Vigor is found in the man who has not yet grown old, and discretion in the man who is not too young.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

The only way to live, is knowing you’re going to die. If you're afraid to die, you'll never be able to live.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who'll argue with you.

The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death.

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government—lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks.

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to allow his vision wherever it takes him.

Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

You don't have to be big or well known to be great.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.

Why has government been instituted? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason & justice without constraint.

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.

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”

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

The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

I remember my youth and the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth and all men.

Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we made today.

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

There is only one time that is important—now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.

No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities - always see them, for they're always there.

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

There is nothing in the world that empowers a human being to overcome external difficulties or internal hardships so much as the awareness that one has a task in life.