Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

On ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ‚cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.

Success isn’t supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. There’s nothing set in stone.

Pessimism never won any battle.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Your decision to be, have and do something out of ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

Expect me to continue what I’ve been doing, which is trying to take over the world.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Do right. Do your best. Treat others as you want to be treated.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

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

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

There’s people that tried to celebrate when I lost that got nothing to do with it. That’s not the sign of a champion.

I always have confidence, whether I miss four in a row or make four in a row, that the next one’s going in. To a coach, sometimes that might not make sense.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

It’s never crowded along the extra mile.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

You can’t be afraid to fail. It’s the only way you succeed – you’re not gonna succeed all the time, and I know that.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table – mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years.

Once I get on a puzzle, I can’t get off.

Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn’t think I’d play one year in the NFL, and now I’m going on my 17th year.

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Some may never live, but the crazy never die.