Some people are like a thermometer. If their environment is negative, they are negative. If bad things happen, they are sad. If good things happen, they are happy. They are simply a product of their environment. Successful people, on the other hand, are more like a thermostat. Even if their environment is negative, they choose to be positive.

You can write and visualize goals all you want, but if you do not take action, your goals will never become a reality. To obtain a goal you have never before achieved will require tasks you have never before done.

There is great power in goals and dreams.

What matters more than where you are is the direction you are heading.

Life is not a competition with others. Life is a competition with yourself—to do your personal best each day.

We have within us the power to choose how we respond to a hurtful situation. We cannot control the actions of others, but we can control how we will respond. As we understand our power to choose, we see that we are in control. Our life is not a result of our environment or upbringing, but a result of our choices. We have the ability to determine the kind of life we want to live and the type of person we wish to be.

Happiness is a choice. Happiness does not depend on outward conditions but on inward decisions.

Each time we make a choice we are either moving toward freedom and prosperity or bondage and misery.

Living off others is a form of bondage—for if you take from a person his responsibility to care for himself, you also take from him the opportunity to be free.

So often we look for a magic secret or new technique that will produce tremendous returns and results with little or no work. Those seeking this magic secret will never find it—for the secret to success is to continually live and apply basic, simple fundamentals over a long period of time.