“Roethlisberger argues that people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “what is the secret of success” when they should be asking, “what prevents me from learning here and now?” To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.”

“Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.”

“I don't anticipate success. We're not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful.”

“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.”

“The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”

“When you transplant a heart from a baboon into a baby as we did, and you say the body of that baby is sacred, does that profane heart from the baboon become sacred when you place it in the body? Or when you take out a gallbladder and throw it in the garbage, is that a sacred gallbladder in the garbage? Or as soon as it's out of the body it loses its sanctity? You see the silliness of our mythology? Children ask the questions I'm just asking now. Trouble is, children get slapped for asking questions like that because they have no defense. But you can't slap me. I can ask the question. It's a logical question.”

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure.”

“I like talking when people ask me sensible questions. Ask me senseless questions also, but in a context, and I can have fun, I can make you laugh at my answers.”

“Where Plato and Aristotle had asked the question, What is man?, St. Augustine (in the Confessions) asks, Who am I?”

“If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for.”