I’m not the same man I used to be, I’m not out hell-raising, stuff like that. I am a changed man.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

What you are comes to you.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

What we think, we become.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don’t want victories anymore.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

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

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

If I’ve got something do. I’m going to attack it. I’m going to attack that stress.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.