“Failing is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.”

“Life’s greatest rewards come from your inner self, from the choices you make, from how you decide to live under whatever circumstances you find yourself in.”

“The beauty of trust is that it erases worry and frees you to get on with other matters. Trust means confidence.”

“80% of people's problems are about how they feel about themselves.” 

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”

“The human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirit strong, even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation. Your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.”

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

“In between saying something and achieving it, there is some pothole to fill; that’s “doing it”. Goals are pursued with the word “GO” and visions with the word “VENTURE”. You can’t be living always in the promise of the cloud; it must rain now!”

“Get it 80 percent right and then correct it later.”

“Although the testimony of my mother’s life helped mold me and taught me how to live, the testimony of her last years and her death gave me insight into how to die.”

“When you understand who you are by knowing what God created you to do, you have no room for becoming jealous over what someone else is doing.”

“A man of character will make himself worthy of any position he is given.”

“Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.”