How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Choose people who lift you up.

I wasn’t born a natural entrepreneur. I had to be trained.

Sometimes I’m a bit under-aggressive and sometimes a bit over. But I think it’s good to have both.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and at the mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs that we have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safely through the worst.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

I can’t keep somebody from being a star, and I can’t make somebody a star, and nobody can.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.

I’m constantly thinking.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

I’m not the most patient of people.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

The person who doesn’t scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.

The best of us must sometimes eat our words.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Getting organized in the normal routines of life and finishing little projects you’ve started is an important first step toward realizing larger goals. If you can’t get a handle on the small things, how will you ever get it together to focus on the big things?

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

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

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.