Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

The best is the enemy of the good.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasures, but the foolish to be a slave to them.

I’ve been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn’t feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.

The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

‚Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

It’s very difficult to regulate yourself, and if you learn to do that, well, it starts to spill over.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

There are many things I do where the centre of it is… It’s almost more my humanitarian work than art.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

Never stop fighting until you arrive at your destined place – that is, the unique you. Have an aim in life, continuously acquire knowledge, work hard, and have perseverance to realise the great life.

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

I believe that every person is born with talent.

I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

I don’t ever make moves under pressure.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

I want to appeal to everyone. Because I’m not saying I’m the best, but we the best.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

If you’re put on a pedestal, you’re supposed to behave yourself like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath.

Better is the enemy of good.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

I never smoke to excess – that is, I smoke in moderation, only one cigar at a time.

Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.

I think we need more idiot control.

My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.