It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.

Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.

Good is the enemy of great. That's why so few things become great.

The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.

For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect - people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us - then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.