Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

We are wiser than we know.

A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

I feel matured in a way that I’m happy about. I’m at this other stage in my life – and it’s not a bad thing at all.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

My parents were just constantly affirming me in everything that I did. Late at night, I’d wake up and hear my mother talking over my bed, saying, ‚You’re going to do great on this test. You can do anything you want.‘

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it’s funny. And it’s not funny. It’s not.

Character isn’t something you were born with and can’t change, like your fingerprints. It’s something you weren’t born with and must take responsibility for forming.

Refuse to be a lazy Christian, and resist a passive, apathetic attitude.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

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.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

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

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

Satan wants us to constantly focus on everything that is wrong with us and look at how far we still have to go. But God desires for us to rejoice in how far we have already come.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

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.

You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?