We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
The ancestor of every action is a thought… Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If you speak or act with an evil thought, pain follows. If you speak or act with a pure thought, happiness follows, like a shadow that never leaves.
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.
