The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

What keeps me going is goals.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.

Competition gives me energy. It keeps me focused.

I always teach myself calm and visualization stuff.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

I’d rather be a victor than a victim.

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Good intentions never change anything. They only become a deeper and deeper rut.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self interest.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

A man of courage is also full of faith.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

My message is that God is a good God.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.