I can’t deny that label-support gave me a leg up – though not every successful artist needs it.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

We’ve always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways… It’s lasted now about 14 years, and we’re very pleased to have survived it.

Bad taste creates many more millionaires than good taste.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

A gypsy told me I was going to do great things. I was going to make all kinds of money.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

I’m glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.

I’m well past the age where I’m acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you’re not going to get played on radio and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

We learned about gratitude and humility – that so many people had a hand in our success, from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean… and we were taught to value everyone’s contribution and treat everyone with respect.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

Every artist was first an amateur.

How you respond to the challenge in the second half will determine what you become after the game, whether you are a winner or a loser.

God puts people in our lives on purpose so we can help them succeed and help them become all He created them to be. Most people will not reach their full potential without somebody else believing in them.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

Why did I become Jackie Chan? Mostly because I work very hard. When people were sleeping, I was still training.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

I dropped out of high school and I couldn’t go to college ‚cause I wasn’t smart enough, so I’d resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

I’m first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why I’m one.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

Man lives for science as well as bread.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

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

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

Instead, I have an abundance mentality: When people are genuinely happy at the successes of others, the pie gets larger.

I don’t think a coach becomes the right coach until he wins a championship.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

On one of my last days at school, the headmaster said I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. That was quite a startling prediction, but in some respects, he was right on both counts!

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world’s popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

I don’t fight in chase of an individual. I hear this sometimes where fighters work their whole careers to reach a matchup with a certain individual. I do not think in that way.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success… such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.

Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can’t take steps toward whatever your goal is.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

Ever since I started to get recognition I’ve picked out certain fans and reverse-stalked them.