At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn’t collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

As an elder of the Americas and of the rest of the planet, it is my responsibility to care for and protect, to the best of my ability, the young.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

I’m from the generation that had the boys‘ door and the girls‘ door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

I spend my money on my props and my creations. I’m an inventor.

I spent much of my childhood in northern Quebec, and often there was no radio, no television – there wasn’t a lot to entertain us. When it rained, I stayed inside reading, writing, drawing.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn’t as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

At the age when other children, I imagine, experience their first ‚feeling‘ for a person, or for art, or for religion, I was affectionate, good, and even pious: by that I mean that under the influence of my mother, I was devoted to the Child Jesus.

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great, the successes from the failures.

I’ve been in the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus since I was 8.

I like to always lead from the front and set an example for whoever is playing with me or around me. I like taking responsibilities. That is my natural thing.

Some people feel that the world owes them a living.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

I lived a sloppy life. So I took very small increments in my life. I started making my bed. I started cleaning my room. There were dishes in the sink. It started off with doing small house chores. I saw that the yard needed to be mowed. So instead of being told it needed to be mowed, I would mow it.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

I think Americans generally are not used to working very hard, in terms of working for the collective. I think in our country we have taken individualism to its farthest reaches, possibly.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

We had to go on and do the work of the court and we did.

I’ll tell you what I was like as a child. I was a good person. I was high-spirited but I was a big reader.

The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

I don’t think I’ve met anyone with a stronger work ethic than Ray Charles.

I’m a religious woman. And I feel I have responsibility. I have no modesty at all. I’m even afraid of it – it’s a learned affectation and it’s just stuck on me like decals. Now I pray for humility because that comes from inside out.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.

If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

I’m a slow worker; I’m, I think, a steady worker.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

Money has to serve, not to rule.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

Everybody could be an entrepreneur, but very few will become very rich entrepreneurs.

Getting rich is about fun. It’s a game, and you have to treat it that way.

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

Duty cannot exist without faith.

I like to have fun all the time, even if I’m working.

With Virgin, I’ve just loved creating things. And as a private company, I can get away with moving Virgin from records to airlines to train companies to space companies to whatever, without ever having to worry about analysts knocking the value of my stock.