Bryce Courtenay

Arthur Bryce Courtenay (14 August 1933 – 22 November 2012) was a South African-Australian advertising director and novelist.

Bryce Courtenay in 2010

Quotes

The Power of One (1989)

• First with the head, then with the heart.
  • Doing something with thinking first before emotion

• Always in life an idea starts small, it is only a sapling idea, but the vines will come and they will try to choke your idea so it cannot grow, and it will die and you will never know you had a big idea, an idea so big it could have grown thirty meters through the dark canopy of leaves and touched the face of the sky. The vines are people who are afraid of originality, of new thinking. Most people you encounter will be vines; when you are a young plant they are very dangerous. Always listen to yourself, Peekay. It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.
  • Talking about self-assurance and self-determination

• The power of one is above all things the power to believe in yourself, ofen well beyond any latent ability you may have previously demonstrated. The mind is the athlete, the body is simply the means it uses to run faster or longer, jump higher, shoot straighter, kick better, swim harder, hit further, or box better.
  • Believing in oneself

• Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.
  • How it feels better listening to oneself

• When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.
  • How hope is related to winning

• Racism does not diminish with brains, it's a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn't necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom!
  • How racism operates

External links

• Goodreads