If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Social media can be very effective in creating movements. In the beginning, that is how I first got attention.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

‚Your Erroneous Zones’ was the book that went over the top simply because I believed in it so much.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

Let each become all that he was created capable of being.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

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.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

In this great country, we celebrate success. We don’t want to penalize those who have done well.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.

I’m chasing perfection.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

Passions are the gales of life.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

I think it’s quite great to set yourself a big challenge, and then you’ve got another reason for keeping fit.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

I would fain grow old learning many things.

If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

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

Before I look stupid and not know what a word means or how to pronounce it, I’ll stop the whole production: ‚Hey, real quick, guys. Define this word for me. Somebody.‘

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.