I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.

Everybody has a purpose.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

Surface R&B doesn’t work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show – that’s not really where it’s at any more. It’s becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

It would be a terrific innovation if you could get your mind to stretch a little further than the next wisecrack.

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

I think that success is having fun.

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

I know I want to always do the best I can.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

The one way to get me to work my hardest was to doubt me.

As your career grows, the list of things that makes you happy should not become smaller, it should become bigger.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

People say ‚I want to be rich‘. The question is, ‚Are you willing to do what it takes?‘

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

To go to the field and train and understand when days are less, that’s where experience helps.

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

I stayed true to my dreams and, eventually, they came true.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

When I won the first Grammy, there was no other feeling like that feeling. It just made me feel like I came so far, like that was just a dream a few years before that, and then it was happening right then.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.