I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.

I have to practice to be good at guitar. I have to write 100 songs before you write the first good one.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.

Irrespective of whether you have talent or not, one has to work hard. Just being talented doesn’t mean anything; you can end up wasting it before you realize.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

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

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

While we may lose heart, we never have to lose hope.

In other words, don’t expect to always be great. Disappointments, failures and setbacks are a normal part of the lifecycle of a unit or a company and what the leader has to do is constantly be up and say ‚we have a problem, let’s go and get it‘.

All great achievements require time.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

Many times, we miss out on God’s best because we give up too soon. We don’t realize how close we are to victory.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

I played a great horse yesterday! It took seven horses to beat him.

Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

Girls shouldn’t worry about being the equal of men in the business world.

One thing Britons have always been celebrated for, and that is being able to stick it out in a tight place.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I’ve always been a fan of the VMAs, and I’ve always worked hard just to get a ticket to go to the VMAs.

I don’t want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

The same law takes place in a system, consisting of many bodies, as in one single body, with regard to their persevering in their state of motion or of rest. For the progressive motion, whether of one single body or of a whole system of bodies, is always to be estimated from the motion of the center of gravity.

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven’t exactly been non-aggressive – including me.

I’ve got a woman’s ability to stick to a job and get on with it when everyone else walks off and leaves it.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

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

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.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.