A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

I would honestly say that with all the awards and all the other things that I’ve done in my life, Dollywood is one of the greatest dreams that I’ve ever had come true – I am so proud of that I can’t even begin to tell you, Dollywood is real special to me.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

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

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

Let go of yesterday.

Never find fault with the absent.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

Enemies are so stimulating.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

I’m only going to stand before God and give an account for my life, not for somebody else’s life. If I have a bad attitude, then I need to say there’s no point in me blaming you for what’s wrong in my life.

Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

Get mad, then get over it.

If a guy hits .300 every year, what does he have to look forward to? I always tried to stay around .190, with three or four RBI. And I tried to get them all in September. That way I always had something to talk about during the winter.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I’m going to grow artistically.

Success is not a stop sign.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

And winning is a huge thing for me.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

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.

The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we’ve forgotten there’s any other way.