Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before.

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Integrity is conforming reality to our words - in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.

Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be a part of the solution, not the problem.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.

Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep.

One doesn't love any of the things of Summer as much as one does the things of Spring.

There are things that Scotsmen get and other people don't get in the dialogue. Scottish characters can be pinpointed by a phrase, targeted very quickly.

The habit of going to your congressman's town hall and asking questions, that's powerful in a way that shouting slogans or getting arrested is not, that is completely counterproductive.

You know you're getting older when you don't care where your wife goes, just so you don't have to go along.

Wherever there's opportunity, the mafia will be there.

I want the good life, but I don't want an easy ride. What I want is to work for it, feel the blood and sweat on my fingertips.

We should not be afraid, when praying to God, to give expression to a definite desire, even though we are in doubt at the time we are praying whether it is really the right thing to pray for or not.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about.