I want the troops from Great Britain and the U.S. to be successful, but by the same token, Afghanistan has always been a screw-up.

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

All great achievements require time.

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible – and no one can now doubt the word of America.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

It confuses me and disappoints me when somebody says, ‚What does he do? What does he do?‘ My records are some of the biggest anthems ever. What do you think, they magically just appear? Obama walked out to my record.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

I consider myself to be as informed on American foreign policy as anyone in America.

It doesn’t matter who you are – if you dream big and if you work really hard, you can achieve unimaginable results, and that’s really good for the nation.

I have always seen the United States as a force of good. And I have learned that there is the idealistic part about what we can do at the U.N. and there is a doable part. And I have learned what is more doable.

For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.

Success is always dangerous, and we need to be alert and avoid becoming the victims of our own success. Will we influence the world for Christ, or will the world influence us?

Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

That is my wish, hope, instruction for all of you: Take your education seriously, okay? Always do that. Because I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for my education.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.

If the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

On one of my last days at school, the headmaster said I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. That was quite a startling prediction, but in some respects, he was right on both counts!

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

The Premier League is one of the most difficult in the world. There’s five, six, or seven clubs that can be the champions. Only one can win, and all the others are disappointed and live in the middle of disaster.

Surface R&B doesn’t work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show – that’s not really where it’s at any more. It’s becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.

It’s a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur’s metric for success. It’s not, and nor should it be.

Of course, ‚I Will Always Love You‘ is the biggest song so far in my career. I’m famous for several, but that one has been recorded by more people and made me more money, I think, than all of them. But that song did come from a true and deep place in my heart.

If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.

Well, I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

If two smart, intelligent, clever guys sit together on a table, and you both want the same, where can be the problem? We all want to be successful.

Success is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

I know of no single formula for success. But over the years I have observed that some attributes of leadership are universal and are often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their efforts, their talents, their insights, their enthusiasm and their inspiration to work together.

The harder I work, the luckier I become.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

You have to be a bastard to make it, and that’s a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

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!

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.

Egypt is the second-largest recipient over a long period of U.S. military and economic aid. Israel is first.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

I have dreams, and I want to see them come to fruition.

This industry has been really good to me. It’s been a great life. I’m not through yet. I’m ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.