Thomas J. Watson

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

You will never know true freedom until you achieve financial freedom.

Get going. Move forward. Aim High. Plan a takeoff. Don’t just sit on the runway and hope someone will come along and push the airplane. It simply won’t happen. Change your attitude and gain some altitude. Believe me, you’ll love it up here.

There were no role models, there were no other people I knew who were dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. I had no idea if this was a stage I was going through or not. But I go to the draft board in Brooklyn and I fill out the form and there was a question that said ‘Do you have homosexual tendencies?’ and I check yes. But where-ever I was on line I’d see people I went to high school with and I was afraid of anyone knowing this about me so I kept on falling back into line and falling back into line. If you said you had homosexual tendencies they sent you to a psychiatrist. He said ‘I see here you’ve checked the box?’ And I said ‘yup’. He said ‘So do you think you’d have a problem serving in the armed forces?’ I said well you know ‘So many men.’ And I was out of the service.

If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.

Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.

Last but not least, I would say you should have big dreams, full dreams, not half dreams. You know, it’s very simple. You can’t put a large box in a small box. Well, you cannot put a full life in a small dream box.

I’m really clear about what my life mission is now. There’s no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I’ve returned to the athlete I once was. I’m integrating all the parts of me – jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher – and becoming stronger as a result.

Reading has been the fuel of my motivation: it has changed the direction in which I have traveled, and it has enhanced my creative imagination more than any other activity I have ever pursued.

If you don’t get out there and try to solve your own problems, it’s never going to change.

Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life.

The price of excellence is discipline. The cost of mediocrity is disappointment.

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.