Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.

I don’t want followers.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

Always say ‚yes‘ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‚yes‘ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

Good intentions never change anything. They only become a deeper and deeper rut.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

I’m afraid to fail again.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

A great man is always willing to be little.

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

If I see something sagging, bagging or dragging I’ll get it nipped, tucked or sucked.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

Fear is the mother of morality.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

Paris by night is a nightmare now. It is not a cliche anymore.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

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

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.