The people who successfully start independent businesses (franchises, I think are a different thing) do it because we have no real choice in the matter. The voice in our heads won't shut up until we discover if we're right, if we can do it, if we can make something happen. This is an art, our art, and to leave it bottled up is a crime.

The best way to honor someone who has said something smart and useful is to say something back that is smart and useful. The other way to honor them is to go do something with what you learned.

Do not personally give any more conscious consideration, either of you, to events that you do not want to happen. Any such concentration, to whatever degree, ties you in with those probabilities, so concentrate upon what you want, and as far as public events are concerned, take it for granted that sometimes even men are wiser than they know.

Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.

In basic terms, civilization is dependent upon the spontaneity and fulfillment of the individual. Your civilization is in sad straits. Not because you are allowed spontaneity or fulfillment to individuals, but because you are denied it, and because your institutions are based upon that premise.

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You're not born this way, you get this way.

Marketers need to spend less time making promises and more time keeping them.