As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, ‚I don’t want to become like Bruce Lee’s son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.‘ I just think my son is too lazy.

See, winners embrace hard work.

It is better to risk starving to death then surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what’s left?

Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.

I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you’re always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.

I grew up in a rural area called Vega Baja and I’m the first of so many talented people in this area to make it out. I take great pride to represent where I come from and I am able to show my fans, and everyone who listens and watches me, that anything is possible.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

Quitting doesn’t enter my mind.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

Opportunity makes a thief.

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

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls… that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.

Don’t worry about motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable – and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

An unused life is an early death.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

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

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

I’m gonna go hard no matter what because I gotta feed my family, and I gotta feed myself.

From caring comes courage.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

I have spent so much time and so much energy making other people’s children stars.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

Housework never really bothered me… what bothered me about it later was that it was expected to be your life… when you’re a housewife, you are constantly interrupted. You have no space in your life. It isn’t the fact that you do the laundry.

Women have to summon up courage to fulfill dormant dreams.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it’s just noise that can be a distraction.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

You’ve got to have faith in what you’re doing and not take no for an answer.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

Do I have chocolate chip cookies? Yes, I do. Do I have mint chocolate chip milkshakes? Yes, I do. I love them. They are fantastic. But when I have them, they’re worth it. I earned them. I did something. I worked out super hard. I stayed clean on food.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.