If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me… every day, they make me proud… every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

There is spontaneity to my work.

The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

If your treat an individual… as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

Many times, we miss out on God’s best because we give up too soon. We don’t realize how close we are to victory.

Diana Ross is a big inspiration to all of us. We all grew up watching everything about her – her mike placement, her grace, her style and her class.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.

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.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

My production and songwriting and the environment around those vocals are not inspired by R&B at all.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

But when I hear a great song, I can’t help but be inspired by it, regardless of whatever genre that song falls under.

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

I don’t intend to stop making music.

I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, ‚No. No, I’m finished. Bye.‘ And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

With drive and a bit of talent, you can move mountains. I know. I’ve done it.

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

A man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora’s ‚Runaway‘ music video. Something inside me clicked, like, ‚That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.‘

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

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

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.