I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency.

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

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

I’ve learned never to say never.

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

Learn to think continentally.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

A man’s character is his fate.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

I think my vice would be outdoing myself.

Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Never mistake motion for action.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

I am sure as everyone knows that I am not the happiest if I don’t do a good job in qualifying or the race.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

I don’t want to hear the word ‚can’t.‘

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.