He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh, are successful may be called intelligent indeed.
Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff.
You cannot know if you will be successful or not. You can only prepare for battle and it must be done with all of your heart and with all of your consciousness. In that manner, you will have an edge.
What is the highest good in all matters of action? To the name, there is almost complete agreement; for uneducated and educated alike call it happiness, and make happiness identical with the good life and successful living. They disagree, however, about the meaning of happiness.
To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now.
We need a sense of the oneness of the 7 billion human beings alive today. When I meet people, I don't think about being different from them, about being Tibetan, Buddhist or even the Dalai Lama. I only think about being a human being. We all share the potential for positive and negative emotions, yet one of our special qualities is our human mind, our intelligence. If we use it well we'll be successful and happy.
Himmlisch ist's wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nich gelungen Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir! Loosely translated: It is heavenly, when I overcome My earthly desires But nevertheless, when I'm not successful, It can also be quite pleasurable.
The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.