After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

I went through a lot of battles in high school.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.

I’m extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. Scoring titles and stuff like that… it sounds, well, I don’t care how it sounds – to me, scoring comes easy. It’s not a challenge to me to win the scoring title, because I know I can.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

In New York I pretty much live in diners – I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.

Hunger is the best pickle.

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

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It’s exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

We live in ugly times.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

I’ll bring my grits when I travel, because I get so hungry on the road.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that’s – those are humbling times, you know?

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

I’m not a man deeply interested in technology. It eludes me.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

Being president is like being a jackass in a hailstorm. There’s nothing to do but to stand there and take it.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

We’re all caught up in circumstances, and we’re all good and evil. When you’re really hungry, for instance, you’ll do anything to survive. I think the most evil thing – well, maybe that’s too strong – but certainly a very evil thing is judgment, the sin of ignorance.

I love the masochistic aspect of eating seething, real Sichuan food in Sichuan Province.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Many people say that this is not an easy issue, we cannot just say that this is how it is, it’s not black and white. But I say that this is black and white. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.