Competition is a sin.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won’t spend yourself quickly.

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.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

Just as I wanted to outdo everyone when I played, I had to outdo everyone when we were out on the town.

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

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

If I’d married someone in show business, there’d be too much competition.

Perfectionists demand perfection from themselves first and foremost.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

Humble people ask for help.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around.

If you sit there and have that mentality of ‚triple down on what you’re good at,‘ you’re never going to grow. You’re always going to stay the same.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a teacher, an astronaut, or a reggaeton singer, you need to study.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

I always make my dreams into goals.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.

Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

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.‘

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?