All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

I think every entertainer’s had nights when things go wrong. I mean you can’t remember everything all the time, and especially if you’re having hard times personally, things going on that you – you know, and then people make it worse. And that makes you feel worse.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

New roads; new ruts.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

I’m of the school of thought where if you can’t sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you’ve got to compromise. You’ve got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

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.

I got a fancy reputation. During high school, every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people had invented, I knew.

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

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.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

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.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

Losing is not an option in Kolkata. It’s not easy, a lot of players even quit.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

I don’t think anyone ever plans to change line-ups, but it’s something that comes with being in bands. I was in a band once and there were always problems – members come and go – and some of the world’s biggest bands have changed line-ups loads!

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‚Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.‘

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

The solutions to our problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

We are going to transform Britain’s rail system from the worst in the world to the best. If you can do a few things like that, when the body gives out, you can say you’ve lived a good life.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

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.

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

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

Favor comes because for a brief moment in the great space of human change and progress some general human purpose finds in him a satisfactory embodiment.

We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.