The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Quitting is the easiest thing to do.

What is past is prologue.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

You simply have to accept that your demons are a part of you.

‚They‘ are the people that don’t believe in you, that say that you won’t succeed. We stay away from ‚They.‘

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

I know a lot of people say they always believed they could get into F1, but I didn’t quite believe that, certainly not when I was 7 and maybe not until I was 14. It was always so far away.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good feeling that comes from that.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I always have to be writing.

Only strength can cooperate. Weakness can only beg.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn’t write. I started again at 16 and have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

Better is the enemy of good.

A man’s character is his fate.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.

I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.

Where much is expected from an individual, he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

No matter what has happened to you in the past or what is going on in your life right now, it has no power to keep you from having an amazingly good future if you will walk by faith in God. God loves you! He wants you to live with victory over sin so you can possess His promises for your life today!

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

We clearly see in God’s Word that anything He tells us to do, He will give us the ability to do it. But do we really believe it? Do we want to believe it? It’s easier to come up with excuses for why we can’t do things that are hard or that we really don’t want to do.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.