Jim Rohn's Quotes

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Don't just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

For every disciplined effort there is a multiple reward.

There are only 3 colors, 10 digits, and 7 notes; its what we do with them that's important.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Make measurable progress in reasonable time.

The book you don't read won't help.

We get paid for bringing value to the market place.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Money is usually attracted, not pursued.

Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer. If you're signed up for a season, see it through. You don't have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

Don't bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. If you don't feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace. If you need money, go to the bank, but not the marketplace.

If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized - never knowing.

Time is more value than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy.

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don't go well.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Character isn't something you were born with and can't change, like your fingerprints. It's something you weren't born with and must take responsibility for forming.

It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

I've had the good fortune of teaching and preaching across much of the globe, while also struggling to make sense of my experience in my own tiny world.

If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.

It's not correct to say Jesus is God. Now, don't run and report me to the bishop, all right? It's not correct to say that - Jesus is the union of the human and the divine. That's different.

Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this.

Men and women are most alike at their most mature and soulful levels. Men and women are most different only at their most immature and merely physical levels.

Most of the Catholics Christians I've met would for all practical purposes believe Jesus is God only, and we are human only. We missed the big point. The point is the integration, both in Jesus and ourselves.

Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.

One would think that people who insist on being monotheistic would be the first in line to walk across the artificial boundaries created by nation states, class systems, cultures and even religions. But often they are the last!

People inside of belonging systems are very threatened by those who are not within that group. They are threatened by anyone who has found their citizenship in places they cannot control.

This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.

This life journey has led me to love mystery and not feel the need to change it or make it un-mysterious. This has put me at odds with many other believers I know who seem to need explanations for everything.

We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me - especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and 'religious' countries.

Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.

Words and ideas work in the short run to get you through school and to impress educators and employers. But they do not work in the long run or in the deep run. We soon find ourselves separate and without wonder.

Yes, the natural world is the first and primary Bible. We have not honored it, so how could we, or would we, know how to honor and properly use the second Bible, when it was written.

Your heart has to be prepared ahead of time through faith and prayer and grace and mercy and love and forgiveness so you can keep your heart open in hell, when hell happens.

We Catholics must admit that there is a constant temptation among us to avoid the lectionary and the Word of God for private and pious devotions that usually have little power to actually change us or call our ego assumptions into question.

You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.

Nature is the one song of praise that never stops singing.

Most Christian 'believers' tend to echo the cultural prejudices and worldviews of the dominant group in their country, with only a minority revealing any real transformation of attitudes or consciousness. It has been true of slavery and racism, classism and consumerism and issues of immigration and health care for the poor.

One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways.

The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.

When 'happiness' eludes us - as, eventually, it always will - we have the invitation to examine our programmed responses and to exercise our power to choose again.

God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history.

Having a school really is the fulfillment of a longtime dream of mine.

I believe in mystery and multiplicity. To religious believers this may sound almost pagan. But I don't think so.

I decided years ago that if I'm going to keep teaching contemplation, then the last years of my life should be contemplative.

If God continues to give me health and a sane mind and verbal ability, I want to teach.

If you depend on being emotionally inspired or newly motivated, you will need a new fix almost every day.

In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well.

It is so important to balance orthodoxy with orthopraxy.