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.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

I like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers.

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

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.

Americans never quit.

Anyone can be a Superman, but nobody can be Jackie Chan.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

When I finish something, I want it out that day. Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.

Nobody should come to the movies unless he believes in heroes.

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

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

We can take a ‚It was hard to get there.‘ But we ain’t taking no loss. We’re going to win.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.

I have good days and bad days.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

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.

The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters.

Storms make trees take deeper roots.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t – to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions – ‚Get over it!‘

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

I can promise you that when I go to Sacramento, I will pump up Sacramento.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

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

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.

I’m not gonna be bad at anything, and I want to actually be the best at anything I’m doing. So if I’m playing basketball, if I’m taking the SATs, like, there’s a competitive spirit behind it. With production, it’s the same thing.