Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

The greatest attitude of all is gratitude.

Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

A man is not rightly conditioned until he is a happy, healthy, and prosperous being; and happiness, health, and prosperity are the result of a harmonious adjustment of the inner with the outer of the man with his surroundings.

Humans are not proud of their ancestors, and rarely invite them round to dinner.

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.

Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

People fall forward to success.

How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?

It's funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality.

On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Human history is in essence a history of ideas.

A human being is a deciding being.