I feel like whatever you’ve done in your career, good or bad, it’s nothing but preparation for the big events to come.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

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.

I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that’s by going step by step.

If I’d known how much packing I’d have to do, I’d have run again.

Success is always dangerous, and we need to be alert and avoid becoming the victims of our own success. Will we influence the world for Christ, or will the world influence us?

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Working hard is very important. You’re not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

I’ve never been a hands-on dad. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but you can’t run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.

I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I can handle pain.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

I’m sure a lot of people out there make mistakes.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

Over the years, I’ve learned that a confident person doesn’t concentrate or focus on their weaknesses – they maximize their strengths.

Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

‚Nothin‘ on You‘ by B.o.B was the first song where I heard myself on the radio. I’d been trying my whole career to write a song like that, which incorporates live instruments with hip-hop and singing.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

For somebody who loves foreign policy, being Secretary is the best job in the world – but it doesn’t happen twice.

Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Theoretical physics is one of the few fields in which being disabled is no handicap – it is all in the mind.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

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

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

Every noble work is at first impossible.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

Partnering with Atlantic Records creates the opportunity to take what we’re doing to the next level, without compromising.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience.