Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

Be not a slave of words.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

I focus on my own job.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

That’s when you know you’re the greatest: when you’re the greatest, and people still put odds against you.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Sometimes you must suffer through something to defeat your fear of it.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

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.

Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

You can’t go backward in life.

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

Only you can control your future.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the learner.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

I have always had this view about the modern education system: we pay attention to brain development, but the development of warmheartedness we take for granted.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Being humble matters.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.