“Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they've got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-size forest. Yet from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become a tree. The Squirrels destroy most of them, and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn't give the few remaining seeds much chance for a start. So it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If we're not on guard, the squirrels (negative-thinking people) will destroy most of them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they're transformed into practical ways for doing things better. ”

“What is a human being, then?''A seed.''A ... seed?''An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree.”

“Every day thousands of people bury good ideas because they are afraid to act on them.And afterwards, the ghosts of these ideas come back to haunt them.”

“My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born.”

“Success shuns the man who lacks ideas.”

“the thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have”

“when we do what is known to be wrong, two negative things happened. First, we feel guilt and this guilt eats away confidence. Second, other people sooner or later find out and lose confidence in us”