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

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the ‚Pilgrim’s Progress,‘ my first collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.

A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

You know, when I have a bad game, it continues to humble me and know that, you know, you still have work to do and you still have a lot of people to impress.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

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.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

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

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

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.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

I do believe in self-help.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Never mistake motion for action.

I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

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.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

You are victors, not victims!

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.