“Failure isn't so bad if it doesn't attack the heart. Success is all right if it doesn't go to the head.”

“You can't move people to action unless you first move them with emotion.... The heart comes before the head.”

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas.”

“And you will have greater credibility with your leader if you admit your shortcomings and refrain from making excuses.”

“How to prepare someone for leadership: I do it. I do it and you watch. You do it and I watch. You do it. You do it and someone else watches.” 

“If you want to win over another person, first win his heart, and the rest of him is likely to follow.”

“You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” —Jim Rohn”

“What you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you say.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON”

“•Find someone to mentor. Once you reach a certain level in your leadership, the most valuable thing you have to give is yourself. Find someone to pour your life into. Then give him time and resources to become a better leader.”

“If you make it your discipline to do a little bit of growing every day, in just a few years you will be amazed by your transformation.”

“Parkinson’s Law: If you have only one letter to write, it will take all day to do it. If you have twenty letters to write, you’ll get them done in one day.”

“When talented teams don’t win, examine the leadership.”

“Live to learn and you will really learn to live.”

“Several years ago Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book, Psycho-Cybernetics, was one of the most popular books on the market. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who often took disfigured faces and made them more attractive. He observed that in every case, the patient’s self-image rose with his and her physical improvement. In addition to being a successful surgeon, Dr. Maltz was a great psychologist who understood human nature. A wealthy woman was greatly concerned about her son, and she came to Dr. Maltz for advice. She had hoped that the son would assume the family business following her husband’s death, but when the son came of age, he refused to assume that responsibility and chose to enter an entirely different field. She thought Dr. Maltz could help convince the boy that he was making a grave error. The doctor agreed to see him, and he probed into the reasons for the young man’s decision. The son explained, “I would have loved to take over the family business, but you don’t understand the relationship I had with my father. He was a driven man who came up the hard way. His objective was to teach me self-reliance, but he made a drastic mistake. He tried to teach me that principle in a negative way. He thought the best way to teach me self-reliance was to never encourage or praise me. He wanted me to be tough and independent. Every day we played catch in the yard. The object was for me to catch the ball ten straight times. I would catch that ball eight or nine times, but always on that tenth throw he would do everything possible to make me miss it. He would throw it on the ground or over my head but always so I had no chance of catching it.” The young man paused for a moment and then said, “He never let me catch the tenth ball—never! And I guess that’s why I have to get away from his business; I want to catch that tenth ball!”

“Occasionally someone will ask me about how ego fits into the leadership equation. They’ll want to know what keeps a leader from having a huge ego. I think the answer lies in each leader’s pathway to leadership. If people paid their dues and gave their best in obscurity, ego is usually not a problem.”