I can say with confidence that I never bought into the hype, and I made sure that the people around me didn't buy into the hype, and I did not surround myself with people who fed me the hype. And I'm glad of that as well.
It was as if for the remainder of his life he was condemned to carry with him the egos of certain people, early met and early loved, and to be only as complete as they were complete themselves. There was some element of loneliness involved--so easy to be loved--so hard to love.
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?
If you belong to an in-group of good, or saved, or elite people, you can only know that you’re in because someone else is out. You cannot live on the right side of the tracks without there being a wrong side of the tracks, so you ought to be grateful to the outside for having the privilege of being on the inside.
I understand why people are discouraged about Iraq. I can understand that. We live in a, you know, world in which people hope things happen quickly. And this is a situation where things don't happen quickly because there's, you know, a very tough group of people using tactics - mainly the killing of innocent people - to achieve their objective, and they're skillful about how they do this. And they also know the impact of what it means on the consciousness of those of us who live in the free world. They know that.
If you fail to honor your people, They will fail to honor you; It is said of a good leader that When the work is done, the aim fulfilled, The people will say, "We did this ourselves."
A lot of the reason why the debate is acrimonious is because of the 24/7 news cycles, blogs, and people being able to just throw something out there in order to get attention. And I'm not going be out there doing the same thing, trying to trash my successor or call attention to myself. I hope that's a positive contribution to the dialogue.
People tend to have one of three 'styles' of interaction. There are takers, who are always trying to serve themselves; matchers, who are always trying to get equal benefit for themselves and others; and givers, who are always trying to help people.
Often people ask how I manage to be happy despite having no arms and no legs. The quick answer is that I have a choice. I can be angry about not having limbs, or I can be thankful that I have a purpose. I chose gratitude.
People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.