“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”

“[S]omething inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it anymore. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible.”

“We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.”

“It taught me to keep on keeping on, no matter how hard the going may be, a lesson I needed to learn before I could succeed in anything.”

“Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.”

“Cuando su mentalidad es dar más de lo que toma, lo fuerza a pensar más en los demás que en usted mismo.”

“When someone is rude, keep a smile on your face. When you stay on the high road and keep your joy, you take away their power."

“If your heart is not attuned to God, it will become a catch basin for every device of the devil. Yes, Satan is at work in our world. The Bible is my authority.”

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”

“We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.”

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.”

“Art should cause violence to be set aside and it is only art that can accomplish this.”

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

“The chances are that your job likes you precisely as much as you like it, but no more.”