33 Quotes by Benjamin Zander

Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know youre doing it.

I make myself a relentless architect of the possibilities of human beings.

Throw yourself into life as someone who makes a difference, accepting that you may not understand how or why.

South Africa is a country built on possibility. Possibility lies in making a difference and creating value from a situation – without denying that certain issues exist.

The major difference between the ‘best’ and the ‘average’ is that the ‘best’ get as much pleasure from practice as performance.

Mistakes can be like ice. If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.

I’m so sorry for you; your lives have been so easy. You can’t play great music unless your heart’s been broken.

As leaders, we’re giving out grades in every encounter we have with people. We can choose to give out grades as an expectation to live up to, and then we can reassess them according to performance. Or we can offer grades as a possibility to live into. The second approach is much more powerful.

The practice of giving an A transports your relationships from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility... This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.