For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

If you do something for someone else, never remember. If someone does something for you, never forget.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind that Al Capone had. Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was. . . . For it is those things - and only those things - that made him what he was. . . . You deserve very little credit for being what you are - and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.