If you ask people what they’ve always wanted to do, most people haven’t done it. That breaks my heart.

Some day I shall be President.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

In all seriousness, people think that it’s the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has ideas, all the time. I tend to write mine down and remember them, but at some point you have to apply the bum to the seat and knock out about sixty five thousand words – that’s how long a novel is.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.

I can’t ever remember sitting around and saying, ‚gosh let’s hurry up and get these debates going, that’ll win it for me.‘ Nope.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

‚They‘ are the people that don’t believe in you, that say that you won’t succeed. We stay away from ‚They.‘

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

People like to blame others. I think a person should just look at their own situation, look around them, find out what they wish to do, and seek and go and do that. And that’s it.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.

What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

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.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

I don’t want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

I always wanted to be a Vine star. I wasn’t, thank God.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

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

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

My drive is other people’s success.

My measure of success is whether I’m fulfilling my mission.

I am not afraid… I was born to do this.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.