Lian Yutang

How you see the future is much more important than what happened in your past.

In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.

I’ve got to confess I’m a pragmatic optimist myself.

I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life – all areas of life. The really good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity.

A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the roughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress even on the smoothest road.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.

Brainpower is the ultimate leverage.

Your understanding of what you read and hear is, to a very large degree, determined by your vocabulary, so improve your vocabulary daily.

All one needs to do is read – books, magazines, research the Internet – and pay attention to the influencers in their lives to discover the myriad people of strong moral character who have and still are making positive, meaningful contributions and differences in our world.

I was in that part of the class that made the top half possible.

When people are in a focused state, the words I can’t,I’ll try,I’ll do it tomorrow,and maybeget forced out of their vocabularies.

But until a person can say deeply and honestly, ‘I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday’, that person cannot say, ‘I choose otherwise’.