The real basic power of an individual isn't what he or she knows; it's the ability to think and learn and face new challenges.

For children mastery entails struggle. This means they must be permitted to struggle. If parents inappropriately step in to "help"-out of impatience or solicitude-they sabotage important learning. Among other things, the child is unlikely to discover the advantages of perseverance and self-discipline.

Integrity is congruence between what you know, what you profess, and what you do.

Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work.

The feeling that "I am enough" does not mean that I have nothing to learn, nothing further to achieve, and nowhere to grow to. It means that I accept myself, that I am not on trial in my own eyes, that I value and respect myself. This is not an act of indulgence but of courage.

Persons of high self-esteem are not driven to make themselves superior to others; they do not seek to prove their value by measuring themselves against a comparative standard. Their joy is being who they are, not in being better than someone else.

Moved by a passion they do not understand for a goal they seldom reach, men and women are haunted by the vision of a distant possibility that refuses to be extinguished.