I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)

...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)

The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.

We tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs. Putting sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed people to dream of the future. Putting four million transistors on a chip actually gave them the future.

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

You can't concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What's gonna happen if it doesn't go right?

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect.