Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

I mean we all need a second chance sometimes.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.

Never regret what you don’t write.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it, as long as you really believe 100 percent.

My mother had a saying: ‚Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.‘

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

You can be passionate about anything.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.

The moment I said I’d finished a book, I knew what would happen. There would be a bidding war, and I would end up with someone who’d got the fattest wallet, who had bought it because I’d written Harry Potter. That would have been why.

I really have no interest in myself.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

The best way out is always through.

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

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.

Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

Competition gives me energy. It keeps me focused.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

We named the book ‚Extreme Ownership‘ because we really found that when we looked at not only at leaders but at teams that were the most successful, we found that the ones that had this attitude of extreme ownership were the ones that did the best, and it’s definitely an attitude that I had.

I was an overnight sensation.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Modesty is the color of virtue.