I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

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

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

Most of the time I spend when I get up in the morning is trying to figure out what is going to happen.

My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne – to beat her down, hide her.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

I don’t think about that. I wasn’t a kid growing up saying one day I’ll get an Oscar and make a speech. That wasn’t on my mind. So what I do is the best work I can do.

I am a walking piece of art every day, with my dreams and my ambitions forward at all times in an effort to inspire my fans to lead their life in that way.

Live the life you’ve dreamed.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

Well, I mean, to me, I think my ultimate – my ultimate goal is winning championships and – and I understand that me going down as one of the greats will not happen until I, you know, win a championship.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud.

I’m inconsistent, even to myself.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

I don’t do research. I never have.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

I have wanted to fly into space for many years, but never imagined it would really be feasible.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

In high school I wanted to be a rock star and was in a lot of bands.

I think and that is all that I am.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.