I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

It is important to remember yourself.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

I have two Golden Boot awards at home. It would be nice to win another, but I wouldn’t mind it if I didn’t.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

I really have no interest in myself.

I was 18 years old, and it was a dream come true for me to work out and eat great food for free. What else do you want in life? People think that is what it is like to be in a SEAL team, but it is less than a fraction of your career as a real SEAL.

I made bad decisions. I’m not denying that I made bad decisions.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

Just because I managed to do a little something, I don’t want anyone back home to think I got the big head.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

God is speaking to us. But are we listening to Him? When our conscience begins to nudge us for whatever reason, we might have this low-level misery or uneasiness about whatever it is we’ve done or we’re about to do. At times like this, it’s wise to prayerfully consider whether we’re offending God with our actions.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

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

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving – as if it were an individual person – its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

It doesn’t matter who you are – if you dream big and if you work really hard, you can achieve unimaginable results, and that’s really good for the nation.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.