If I’d been a housemaid I’d have been the best in Australia – I couldn’t help it. It’s got to be perfection for me.

One of the drawbacks of fame is that one can never escape from it.

Do everything yourself.

Always sing below your potential.

My voice has been raised not only in song, but to make the big world outside through me, understand something of the spirit of my beloved country.

I don’t think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.

Man is a blind, witless, low brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth.

We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.

The first rule in opera is the first rule in life: see to everything yourself.

One of the drawbacks of fame is that one can never escape from it.

If I’d been a housemaid I’d have been the best in Australia — I couldn’t help it. It’s got to be perfection for me.

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

Where there is no hope in the future, there is no power in the present.

Leadership is more ? if not much more ? influence, rather than position.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

Most people who want to get ahead do it backward. They think, ‘I’ll get a bigger job, then I’ll learn how to be a leader.’ But showing leadership skill is how you get the bigger job in the first place. Leadership isn’t a position, it’s a process.

A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.