All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Perseverance is also key to success in any endeavor, but without perseverance in combat, there can be no victory.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

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

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

Find people who will make you better.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.

We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.

I believe the destiny of your generation – and your nation – is a rendezvous with excellence.

What is once well done is done forever.

I was a fighting machine with a will of iron.

The making of the far-famed New York Central Park was opposed by even good men, with misguided pluck, perseverance, and ingenuity, but straight right won its way, and now that park is appreciated. So we confidently believe it will be with our great national parks and forest reservations.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Whatever you want to do, do with full passion and work really hard towards it. Don’t look anywhere else. There will be a few distractions, but if you can be true to yourself, you will be successful for sure.

Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

Be careful what you set your heart upon – for it will surely be yours.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I’d tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we’re going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Football changed my life and it gave me a platform to get out my aggression and it gave me a sense of value.

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

It was clear to me that if I could get through Princeton at the top of my class, I could do anything in the world.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

People in their handlings of affairs often fail when they are about to succeed. If one remains as careful at the end as he was at the beginning, there will be no failure.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

Before broadcasting for 50-some years, I did TV, played 10 years in the big leagues, won a world championship – and played a big part in that, too, letting the Cardinals inject me with hepatitis. Takes a big man to do that.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.

Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was that they didn’t get that. No joke – I’d leave meetings crying all the time.

Marines don’t know how to spell the word ‚defeat‘.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

Endurance is patience concentrated.

You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

I have only one counsel for you – be master.

Without failure there is no achievement.