If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

No person is important enough to make me angry.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

I get really motivated when I put on the India jersey. It is a responsibility, so I want to perform in the best way I can.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

I just have an enthusiasm for life.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.

Never mistake motion for action.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to have certain prerequisites or a crazy life story in order to be successful in this world. But the truth is you really don’t.

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

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

The resistance that you fight physically in the gym and the resistance that you fight in life can only build a strong character.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish – people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people – and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

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.

I never – you know also one of the things that would save me for a man my age, it was not that easy to lose that much weight and fall down and look like something draped.

I do have motivation. A lot of motivation.

I used to feel unsafe right in the moment of an accomplishment – I felt the ground fall from under my feet because this could be the end. And even now, while everyone is celebrating, I’m on to the next thing. I don’t want to get lost in this big cushion of success.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

What is true belongs to me!

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

I was brought up to try to see what was wrong and right it. Since I am a writer, writing is how I right it.

After all those years in Asia, I don’t have to do promotion anymore. We just release a Jackie Chan movie and – Boom! – people go.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Years ago, when I first started being a big star, I had fans that were fanatical. It was when ‚Jolene‘ was a big hit.

Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

Bring them on.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

One today is worth two tomorrows.