If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

The doer alone learneth.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

People don’t usually compliment your character.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

I can’t do nothing just a little.

I get up every morning and say, ‚Father, give me strength today, not strength so I can lift 500 pounds, but give me strength, Lord, so when I speak, my words might motivate, might inspire somebody, Lord, when they see me, let them see you. When they hear me, Lord, let them hear you. In your holy name I pray.‘

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

Alas! You complain that your soul is out of tune. Then ask the Master to tune the heart-strings.

Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

There’s an inherent danger in letting people think that they have perfected something. When they believe they’ve ‚nailed it,‘ most people tend to sit back and rest on their laurels while countless others will be labouring furiously to better their work!

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

I’ll promise to go easier on drinking and to get to bed earlier, but not for you, fifty thousand dollars, or two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars will I give up women. They’re too much fun.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

As you think, so shall you become.

Forget the past.

The more centuries that I am able to score, the happier I will be.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

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