Ultimately, we wish the joy of perfect union with the person we love.

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.

Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely.

Trust your own instincts, go inside, follow your heart. Right from the start. go ahead and stand up for what you believe in. As I've learned, that's the path to happiness.

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

Business is about people. It's about passion. It's about bold ideas, bold small ideas or bold large ideas.

Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me, Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

Communication is everyone's panacea for everything.

'In Search of Excellence' - even the title - is a reminder that business isn't dry, dreary, boring, or by the numbers. Life at work can be cool - and work that's cool isn't confined to Tiger Woods, Yo-Yo Ma, or Tom Hanks. It's available to all of us and any of us.

Stop being conned by the old mantra that says, 'Leaders are cool, managers are dweebs.' Instead, follow the Peters Principle: Leaders are cool. Managers are cool too!

For the blue-collar worker, the driving force behind change was factory automation using programmable machine tools. For the office worker, it's office automation using computer technology: enterprise-resource-planning systems, groupware, intranets, extranets, expert systems, the Web, and e-commerce.

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.

Community organizing is all about building grassroots support. It's about identifying the people around you with whom you can create a common, passionate cause. And it's about ignoring the conventional wisdom of company politics and instead playing the game by very different rules.

Everyone has a chance to learn, improve, and build up their skills.

Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department.

I am deeply spiritual; I revel in those things that make for good - the things that we can do to shed a little light, to help place an oft-dissonant universe back in tune with itself... Long live art, long live friendship, long live the joy of life!

I have enjoyed most particularly reading the correspondence between Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. The genuine friendship, competitiveness and support that thread through their communications are life lessons for us all.

I read everything. I'll read a John Grisham novel, I'll sit and read a whole book of poems by Maya Angelou, or I'll just read some Mary Oliver - this is a book that was given to me for Christmas. No particular genre. And I read in French, and I read in German, and I read in English. I love to see how other people use language.

'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

I want to keep learning, keep exploring, keep doing more.

There's no anger ever in a spiritual. There's always the dream of a hope of a better day coming. That God understands the troubles that I'm experiencing.

There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.

I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, place and power - far from the demands of business - out of the dusty highway where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise of other fools.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.

A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

Religion is not theory - it is life. It is not intellectual conviction - it is divine humanity, and nothing else.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.

I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty.

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.