If I wished to do something, even if I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to make the effort with me, I would go out solo climbing. I did find solo climbing very challenging and a little frightening. You knew that you were completely on your own, and you had to overcome all the problems and possible dangers.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

Winning the title in England is the biggest challenge of them all.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.

My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don’t ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren’t blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

I have a wish. It as a fear as well – that in my end will be my beginning.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

Ritual is another word for fear, manifested in a different way.

I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.

Quitting doesn’t enter my mind.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

This thing of being a hero, about the main thing to it is to know when to die.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

People just don’t understand how obsessed I am with winning.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

With fools, there is no companionship. Rather than to live with men who are selfish, vain, quarrelsome, and obstinate, let a man walk alone.