Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.
~ James Allen

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own natureà is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
~ Henri Frederic Amiel

When the archer misses the mark, he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull's eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim -- improve yourself.
~ Gilbert Arland

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
~ Isaac Asimov

There is no use whatever trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push anyone up a ladder unless he be willing to climb himself.
~ Andrew Carnegie

You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. The single relationship that is truly central and crucial in a life is the relationship to the self. Of all the people you will know in a lifetime, you are the only one you will never lose.
~ Jo Coudert

It makes little difference how many university courses or degrees a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
~ Norman Cousins

He who stops being better stops being good.
~ Oliver Cromwell

Become addicted to constant and never-ending self-improvement.
~ Anthony J. D'Angelo

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.
~ John Dewey

People never improve unless they look to some standard or example higher or better than themselves.
~ Tryon Edwards

The never-ending task of self improvement.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it.
~ Thaddeus Golas

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven't done anything today.
~ Lou Holtz

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
~ Aldous Huxley

Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him.
~ Florence King

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practicing moral self-purification; I don't eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.
~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.
~ Georg C. Lichtenberg