“Among these temperamentally unhappy campers are "reactant" personalities, who focus on what they often wrongly perceive as others' attempts to control them. In one experiment, some of these touchy individuals were asked to think of two people they knew: a bossy sort who advocated hard work and a mellow type who preached la dolce vita. Then, one of the names was flashed before the subjects too briefly to register in their conscious awareness. Next, the subjects were given a task to perform. Those who had been exposed to the hard-driving name performed markedly worse than those exposed to the easygoing name. Even this weak, subliminal attention to an emotional cue that suggested control was enough to get their reactant backs up and cause them to act to their own disadvantage. All relationships involve give-and-take and cooperation, so a person who habitually attends to ordinary requests or suggestions like a bull to a red flag is in for big trouble in both home and workplace.”

“I quickly dropped my hands and changed the subject. "So those two who visited me the other night. Who were they?" I asked.He smiled, knowingly. "Ares and Aphrodite."Of course, I thought. In fact, I think I had already sort of figured that out. Although in my mind they were still Mr. Scowly Face and Miss Perfect Bitch. I found those the names I had given them much more appropriate”

“The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters:They are individuals who cause trouble for sport - inciting oppositionto management for a variety of reasons, most of them petty.Usually these people have good performance - that's their cover - and sothey are endured or appeased.A company that manages people well takes disrupters head-on.First they give them very tough evaluations, naming their bad behaviourand demanding it change.Usually it won't. Disrupters are a personality type.If that's the case, get them out of the way of people trying to do theirjobs.They're poison.”

“Every society needs heroes. And every society has them. The reason we don't often see them is because we don't bother to look.There are two kinds of heroes. Heroes who shine in the face of great adversity, who perform an amazing feat in a difficult situation. And heroes who live among us, who do their work unceremoniously, unnoticed by many of us, but who make a difference in the lives of others.Heroes are selfless people who perform extraordinary acts. The mark of heroes is not necessarily the result of their action, but what they are willing to do for others and for their chosen cause. Even if they fail, their determination lives on for others to follow. The glory lies not in the achievement, but in the sacrifice.”

“In fact, I think that our society expects schools to get students to the point where they do things only for outside rewards. People who perform tasks for their internal reasons are hard to control. Now, I don't think teachers get up in the morning and say to themselves, 'I', going to go to school today and take away all those young people's internal motivations' ...but that's exactly what often happens.”

“What fun is it? Why all that hard, exhausting work? Where does it get you? Where's the good of it? It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest...”