How do we learn the best?

Fortunes gravitate to men whose minds have been prepared to attract them, just as surely as water gravitates to the ocean.

Failure seems to be nature’s plan for preparing us for great responsibilities. If everything we attempted in life were achieved with a minimum of effort and came out exactly as planned, how little we would learn — and how boring life would be! And how arrogant we would become if we succeeded at everything we attempted.

Failure allows us to develop the essential quality of humility. It is not easy — when you are the person experiencing failure — to accept it philosophically, serene in the knowledge that this is one of life’s great learning experiences. But it is. Nature’s ways are not always easily understood, but they are repetitive and therefore predictable. You can be absolutely certain that when you feel you are being most unfairly tested, you are being prepared for great achievement.

We human beings are the only creatures on earth who have the capacity for belief. That capacity, combined with our almost innate capability to distinguish right from wrong, provides us with a formidable power in our quest for a richer, more rewarding life. When you set goals for yourself, make sure they are based on doing the right thing for your family, your friends, your employees, and yourself. When others see that you are fair and just in your dealings with them and that you are a generous, principled person, they will move heaven and earth for you.

What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.

The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at the moment of some crisis, through which they are introduced to their “other selves.”

Might throws itself on the side of those who believe in right. If you think you dare not, you don’t.