As long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

The ability to take misfortune and make something good come of it is a rare gift. Those who possess it are ..said to have resilience or courage.

Most of us become so rigidly fixed in the ruts carved out by genetic programming and social conditioning that we ignore the options of choosing any other course of action. Living exclusively by genetic and social instructions is fine as long as everything goes well. But the moment bioloical or social goals are frustrated- which in the long run is inevitable - a person must formulate new goals, and create a new flow activity for himself, or else he will always waste his energies in inner turmoil.

...in the words of Max DePree: "Management has a lot to do with answers. But leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: 'Who do we intend to be?' Not 'What are we going to do?' but 'Who do we intend to be?'"

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media.

It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening.

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there