Storms make trees take deeper roots.

Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

Losing is tough.

It’s not ‚can‘; it’s ‚will.‘ You have to will things into fruition.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

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

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

I remember they used to tell me, they said, ‚Khaled, you can’t get a Rolls-Royce; you need to get one of them small ones.‘ So I went and bought a Phantom.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

I have short goals – to get better every day, to help my teammates every day – but my only ultimate goal is to win an NBA championship. It’s all that matters. I dream about it. I dream about it all the time, how it would look, how it would feel. It would be so amazing.

Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed – chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

People have to go through trials and tribulations to get where they at. Do your thing – continue to rock it – because obviously, God wants you here.

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: ‚We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.‘

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

I wanted to use my fame and this face that everyone knows so well to help uplift and inspire people around the world.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

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

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

You’ve really got to start hitting the books because it’s no joke out here.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.