You can’t be neutral on a moving train.

Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.

Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.

Be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for humanity.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

Talk does not cook rice.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

The access to life as it is lived is something called wonder. The process is to bracket what you believe and think, to put it aside, and stand in wonder of what you’re dealing with as it is lived.

The best way to get a good idea is to get lots of ideas.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it.

But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.

Rule your mind or it will rule you.

There is one thing we can do, and the happiest people are those who can do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present. We can be all here. We can… give all our attention to the opportunity before us.

Luck favors the prepared mind.

I have been rich and I have been poor, and believe me, rich is better.