A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options - one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution...it does not base success on a submissive world or overpowering force, but on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience.

In America, people focus on the end result; they focus on the star.

Very gifted people, they win and they win, and they are told that they win because they are a winner. That seems like a positive thing to tell children, but ultimately, what that means is when they lose, it must make them a loser.

Our minds are all different and I believe cultivating a keen introspective sensitivity is absolutely essential in discovering our potential.

It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.

Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation.

At the very core of my relationship to learning is the idea that we should be as organic as possible. We need to cultivate a deeply refined introspective sense, and build our relationship to learning around our nuance of character.