Every human life contains a potential. It that potential is not fulfilled, that life was wasted.

Will life in our Universe fulfill its potential or squander it? This depends to a great extent on what we humans alive today do during our lifetime, and I’m optimistic that we can make the future of life truly awesome if we make the right choices.

True potential and fulfillment in life is not what is accomplished, but who benefits from them.

One central need in life is to fulfill its own potential.

You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.

Are we wasting our lives? By that word “wasting” we mean dissipating our energy in various ways, dissipating it in specialized professions. Are we wasting our whole existence, our life? If you are rich, you may say, “Yes, I have accumulated a lot of money, it has been a great pleasure.” Or if you have a certain talent, that talent is a danger to a religious life. Talent is a gift, a faculty, an aptitude in a particular direction, which is specialization. Specialization is a fragmentary process. So you must ask yourself whether you are wasting your life. You may be rich, you may have all kinds of faculties, you may be a specialist, a great scientist or a businessman, but at the end of your life has all that been a waste? All the travail, all the sorrow, all the tremendous anxiety, insecurity, the foolish illusions that man has collected, all his gods, all his saints and so on — have all that been a waste? You may have power, position, but at the end of it — what? Please, this is a serious question that you must ask yourself. Another cannot answer this question for you.

I think one of the things we need to do is to avoid the tragic waste of human potential.

Human potential, though not always apparent, is there waiting to be discovered and invited forth.

The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean unsailed, a
new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be
released and channeled toward some great good.

Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.

Consider—
We are born
Not with purpose,
But with potential.

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.