Dr Phil McGraw

You don’t need a rope to pinch a stranger’s butt.

There is nothing wrong with your marriage if you’re dealing with bills and kids and the broken garbage disposal and in-laws and work demands. That’s a normal marriage.

There has never been a merging of two lives where significant problems of daily living did not occur. One way or another, your relationship is going to be affected. The only question is how. There’s a big difference between knowing and doing. It’s not what happens between partners that determines the outcome of a relationship, it’s how they handle what happens. If all you deal with in your relationship is problems, then you will have a problem relationship. If you want your pound of flesh with full acknowledgement that you’re right, your future will be dim.

Right now, make a list of what you admire about yourself- don’t stop until you’ve filled a page. Sit and relish each quality and accomplishment. When you remember how much you have to be proud of, you don’t need to envy others. Instead of wallowing in your jealousy, use your friends’ accomplishments as inspiration to pursue the life you want.

Failure is no accident.

Common sense needs to be more common.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

It is better to fail at your own life than to succeed at someone else’s.

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

If someone out there doesn’t agree with me, then somewhere a village is missing their idiot.

If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and previously non-existent disposition on the part of men to believe that a new idea can have value.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

Much depends on people knowing what opportunity means; it doesn’t mean a silver platter, it oftener means a spade. Self-help means something sterner than ‘help yourself’–reach over and take it.

To me, you’ll always be the rising suns, the sinking moons, and all the stars that come between the sound of rain and river stones, the warmth of my sheets, the ache in my bones.

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Do you realize if it weren’t for Edison we’d be watching TV by candlelight?

The Internet is just bringing all kinds of information into the home. There’s just a lot of distraction, a lot of competition for the parent’s voice to resonate in the children’s ears.

The quickest way to become troubled is to be concerned with what people say about your work.

Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.