To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation – and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

Courage is grace under pressure.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

I came up from a difficult background.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

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

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

I come from – I came from Wales, and it’s a strong, butch society. We were in the war and all that. People didn’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves. You had to get on with it. So my credo is get on with it. I don’t waste time being soft. I’m not cold, but I don’t like being, wasting my time with – life’s too short.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

I think music is something that can, and should, be used to get you into different things because eventually what goes up must come down – we’re not going to be the number one group in the world forever – so you have to have something else to fall back on.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do.

Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it… Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.

A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

The sun doesn’t always shine in West Virginia, but the people do.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.

No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

In college, a loss is pretty devastating. That feeling kind of goes away in an 82-game season. You hate to lose, but you also have a lot more games to make up for it.

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

Good luck has its storms.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

I’m not going to get somewhere and say, ‚OK, I’m done.‘ Success is never final; I’ll just keep on going. The same way as failure never being fatal. Just keep going. I’m going to the stars and then past them.