Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

I’m no leader; I’m a little humble follower.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

The self is hateful.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Only stupid people are changed by success.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

Reactive people… are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.

It is more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city.

You have to stay faithful to what you’re working on.

In soloing – as in other activities – it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.

I’m not the sort of person who gives up on things. The first time we crossed the Atlantic in the balloon, it crashed, and we went on and did the Pacific. First time we crossed the Atlantic in a boat, it sank, and we went on and got the record. So, generally speaking, we will pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down, and carry on.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

There are a lot of inaccuracies out there when it comes to the SEAL training process. You will see guys carrying logs around on television. They think that the hardest part about being on a SEAL team is getting through that training. The fact of the matter is, if you have a good attitude, that training is fun. I had a blast.

We will explore the mysteries of science and harness the power of technology and innovation. We will realise the opportunities of the digital world. Our youth will learn more from – and with – each other.

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We’re reared tough, and we fight.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great, the successes from the failures.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

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

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.