I have a self-defense mind. I’ve had it all my life.

A smart girl leaves before she is left.

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

I’m ugly.

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

Not one person can make or break what I’m doing, except me or God.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

Being happy is a matter of personal taste.

I’m not going to lie; listen, I’m nice at basketball.

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

I’m confident with my ability.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

I am confident I will set foot again in Tibet in my lifetime.

I’m a big perfectionist! I’m trying to channel super-confident women like Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Beyonce, because I realized that if you want something, you really have to go for it, just like they do.

The best fashion advice I’d say would be just to do what makes you comfortable and what makes you feel cute, and that’s how you’re gonna look your best ‚cause when you feel your best, everybody else can feel it, too.

We are Divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

The goal of jiu-jitsu in self-defense isn’t to take someone down to the ground – the goal in jiu-jitsu for self-defense is actually to be able to defend yourself on the ground, get up, and get away from an attacker. That’s what the goal is.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

It’s a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That’s what you should learn self-defense for.

To lead people walk behind them.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

If I can be a leader, I will.

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

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

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way.

Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.