Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

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

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

I love Los Angeles, and it’s been very good to me, but if everyone is running around telling the stories, who’s living them? You don’t play characters that are celebrities – you play guys who know what to do when their septic tank’s blocked.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it’s up to me to choose to develop them.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

Success is not a stop sign.

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

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

Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity; that, at least one may replace the parent.

I don’t think you ever really know what all you’re doing, so you have to act on faith.

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

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

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort – I think it keeps you going.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

If it doesn’t work out there will never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain.

Leadership is hard. It’s a skill. It’s a technique.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

When I get logical, and I don’t trust my instincts – that’s when I get in trouble.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‚Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.