Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

If my businesses or my investments are not profitable, then I don’t eat. And I like to eat.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus‘ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

I don’t believe I’ll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn’t go to Harvard.

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

The attempt and not the deed confounds us.

I am results-oriented.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

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.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

Magic has five championships. I have five championships. I’m pretty sure we both know what we’re doing.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

The traveller has reached the end of the journey!

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

Why did I become Jackie Chan? Mostly because I work very hard. When people were sleeping, I was still training.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

If I am a cup maker, I’m interested in making the best cup I possibly can. My effort goes into that cup, not what people think about it.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

Obviously this song is an achievement for me in my career, but what makes me really feel good is to make Latinos feel proud. To provoke that pride that a pop figure and someone so big in music globally like Drake would sing with me completely in Spanish and create this hit ‚MIA.‘ That’s the best part of it.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

My understanding of racial discrimination as a child was highly distorted because the most prominent man in Archery was an African-American bishop. When he came home from up north, where he was in charge of A.M.E. churches in five states, it was front-page news. He was the most successful man in my life.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.