Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

Let us endeavor so to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

It’s never crowded along the extra mile.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

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.

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.

Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally. So I get up early in the morning, 4 o’clock, and I sit at my desk and what I do is just dream. After three or four hours, that’s enough. In the afternoon, I run. The next day, the dream will continue.

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin‘ away.

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

There’s people that tried to celebrate when I lost that got nothing to do with it. That’s not the sign of a champion.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.

Once I get on a puzzle, I can’t get off.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

‚9 to 5,‘ that little song, that little story, just won’t ever end. Just like ‚I Will Always Love You,‘ it just keeps comin‘ back, popping up its head in one way or another.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

Expect me to continue what I’ve been doing, which is trying to take over the world.

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.

Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table – mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn’t think I’d play one year in the NFL, and now I’m going on my 17th year.

On ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ‚cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

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.‘

Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties.

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Success isn’t supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. There’s nothing set in stone.

I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

I always have confidence, whether I miss four in a row or make four in a row, that the next one’s going in. To a coach, sometimes that might not make sense.

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

Pessimism never won any battle.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.