I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

You either make dust or eat dust.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

I don’t want to be an action star, an action star’s life is so short. I want my life to get longer, I want my career to get longer.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

Freedom is what everyone wants – to be able to act and live with freedom. But the only way to get to a place of freedom is through discipline.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

I think I’ve got wiser.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

I think everybody’s trying to get to a place in themselves where they conquer what they was afraid of; they achieve some of their life goals, kept their word about what they were trying to do.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

I’ve learned that we all change constantly. It’s rare to find that person who is growing with you in the same way at the same time, who encourages you to grow.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

You fail only if you stop writing.

There’s an inherent danger in letting people think that they have perfected something. When they believe they’ve ‚nailed it,‘ most people tend to sit back and rest on their laurels while countless others will be labouring furiously to better their work!

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Education is what you learn after you leave school.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

To me, if you’re trying to impress a girl, get a date, they’re gonna like that more because you’re a confident guy. That’s what it comes down to.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

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.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.