Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

I just feel like, with rappers, there’s so much complacency. It’s like, ‚Oh, I’m a rapper. I’m successful. I make money. That’s all that matters.‘ But there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s happening.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

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.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

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

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

My name is Adam Sandler. I’m not particularly talented. I’m not particularly good-looking. And yet I’m a multi-millionaire.

Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures – they’re lying if they say they haven’t. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind – the product wasn’t distinct enough from Coca-Cola.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We’re inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, ‚Gimme, gimme, gimme,‘ you will always be in short supply.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

I don’t think anything about a personal legacy. I mean, those words would never come out of my mouth unless I just repeated them. Those things have never been important to me.

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

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don’t.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

People always tell you, ‚Be humble. Be humble.‘ When was the last time someone told you to be amazing? Be great! Be great! Be awesome! Be awesome!

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

A lot was accomplished in my mixtape career. But I still needed a few things: I needed to be recognized. I need to have radio. I need to have a real retail machine that can get us where we need to get that.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.