I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

Mentally, the only players who survive in the pros are the ones able to manage all their responsibilities. Everybody struggles in different ways.

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

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.

You have to be able to accept failure to get better.

I know how to swim through backlash. I can tread water through backlash… If anything, that’s all giving me power.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

It requires more courage to suffer than to die.

When people are very damaged, they can often meet the world with a kind of defiance.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

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.‘

The best way out of a difficulty is through it.

It’s important that we invest in America – literally. The terrorists wanted to destroy our economy, and we can’t let our system fall apart. We also have to invest in one another.

To our brothers in Latin America and the world, we must convey that the Cuban people will overcome.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

While playing golf today I hit two good balls. I stepped on a rake.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

I feel like people can relate to me because we all go through wins and roadblocks and passion and pain, and it’s a vibe.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

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

I wanted to race cars. I didn’t like school, and all I wanted to do was work on cars. But right before I graduated, I got into a really bad car accident, and I spent that summer in the hospital thinking about where I was heading. I decided to take education more seriously and go to a community college.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

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

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.

A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.