“He liked fishing and seemed to take pride in being able to like such a stupid occupation.”

“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.” 

“In a country ruled by laws, it seemed to me that nothing was more important than removing politics from the process of choosing judges. During previous administrations in California, governors had often handed out judgeships to friends and cronies like prizes at a company picnic. Not only had this produced a lot of inferior judges, it had placed a number of partisans on the bench who believed that putting on the black robes of a judge gave them a license to rewrite the laws. I wanted judges who would interpret the Constitution, not rewrite it.”

“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!”

“The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.”

“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms”

“He who dies with the most toys is still dead.”

“el conocimiento es poder”. ¡No es nada de eso! El conocimiento es sólo un poder potencial. Se convierte en poder sólo cuando, y si está, organizado en planes definidos de acción, y dirigido a un fin determinado.”

“Before a dream can mature and manifest itself as real, a lot of loaded efforts come into play! You are the pivot on which those loads must be turned!”

“The emotions of faith, love, and Sex are the most powerful of all the major positive emotions.

“For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to go ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”

“Where there is love there is life.”

“As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.”

“He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:12).”