Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

We should no longer measure our wealth and success in the graph that shows economic growth, but in the curve that shows the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

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

A great fortune is a great slavery.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus‘ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

I don’t run restaurants that are out of control. We are about establishing phenomenal footholdings with talent.

The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we’re not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally – but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don’t think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

In pop music, the public usually see the results – the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours – but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won’t make it.

What is once well done is done forever.

The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

I just hate meetings. Though it’s true that once you’ve made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don’t want to seize every opportunity to do so.

If you sit there and have that mentality of ‚triple down on what you’re good at,‘ you’re never going to grow. You’re always going to stay the same.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

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.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes – ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Aim for the highest.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

To keep the business going, you gotta keep it boomin‘.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

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.