Peter Koestenbaum Quotes

Whenever someone sorrows, I do not say, “forget it,” or “it will pass,” or “it could be worse” - all of which deny the integrity of the painful experience. But I say, to the contrary, “It is worse than you may allow yourself to think. Delve into the depth. Stay with the feeling. Think of it as a precious source of knowledge and guidance. Then and only then will you be ready to face it and be transformed in the process.

Some people are more talented than others. Some are more educationally privileged than others. But we all have the capacity to be great. Greatness comes with recognizing that your potential is limited only by how you choose, how you use your freedom, how resolute you are, in short, by your attitude. And we are all free to choose our attitude.

Anxiety is the experience of growth itself. In any endeavor, how do you feel when you go from one stage to the next? The answer: You feel anxious. Anxiety that is denied makes us ill; anxiety that is fully confronted and fully lived through converts itself into joy, security, strength, centeredness, and character. The practical formula: Go where the pain is.

Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense.

The best leaders operate in four dimensions: vision, reality, ethics, and courage.

You are 100 percent responsible for how your children turn out. And you accomplish that by teaching them that they are 100 percent responsible for how they turn out.

Reflection doesn't take anything away from decisiveness, from being a person of action. In fact, it generates the inner toughness that you need to be an effective person of action - to be a leader.

The greatest happiness in life is to be truly and consistently creative.

Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.

To be a leader is to be awake and alert, to be dissatisfied at all times

People who achieve access to the deepest roots of their freedom can completely change.

To recognize another's inwardness is to have seen the sacred.