Jim Stavridis is the former NATO commander who is sometimes on people's lists, also very plausible, self-possessed, someone with sobriety.

Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.

Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.

One of the things this world is finding is that emotion is the basis of reason. We really have to trust our emotions, which are much smarter than our reason in some ways.

The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.

Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.

It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward?

It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.

The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less.

Artists, by their free expressions, encourage others to be free. This is the quality that makes works of art enduring.

While he sweated out a story she bled put a poem. (Dark City Lights)

Feeling good about yourself is the best sleeping pill of all.

I do love shoes that make my legs longer. I have the upper body of someone who's 5ft 8in, so high heels help me even out the discrepancy.

If you don't practice you don't deserve to win.

Things just always seem to lead to the logical next step.

Death is always a constant possibility and probability and of course an inevitability, as well.

The idea that you know more than the intelligence community knows, it's a little like saying, I know more about physics than my professor.

The only time anyone's admitted they were a Christian before was when they were busy telling me why they're better than me.

I know that and I feel that.