I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.

If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18, I arrived at a dream club like Manchester United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything.

I will never retire unless I have to.

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

For me, America is really, truly the indispensable nation.

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.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

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

Endurance is patience concentrated.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

I was a fighting machine with a will of iron.

It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.

We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we will always be free.

When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you are going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

You aren’t going to find anybody that’s going to be successful without making a sacrifice and without perseverance.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

I think it does Discworld good if I don’t write about it all the time: sometimes you have to get it out of your system.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Life is filled with detours and dead ends, trials and challenges of every kind. Each of us has likely had times when distress, anguish, and despair almost consumed us.

Hoover was a patriot in his heart, but he definitely exceeded his power.

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!

You want to know whether we’re better off? I’ve got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

I hold that while man exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

The pace of progress on Mars depends upon the pace of progress of SpaceX.

I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.

I don’t know what drives me to succeed.