If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

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

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

I’ve noticed that when I am selling a lot of records, certain things become easier. I’m not talking about getting a table in a restaurant.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

As you think, so shall you become.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

The child who desires education will be bettered by it; the child who dislikes it disgraced.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

No parent is perfect; we all can look back and think of things we could’ve done to help our children be better prepared for adulthood. And sometimes it’s best to admit it to them and encourage them to learn from our mistakes.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

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

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

I’m not afraid to make mistakes.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

Worldly faces never look so worldly as at a funeral. They have the same effect of grating incongruity as the sound of a coarse voice breaking the solemn silence of night.

I really have had to swallow my own prejudice at times.

It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

‚Soul Plane‘ put me in a position to succeed. I’m glad I had the opportunity to be the lead man.

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

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

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

As a man sow, shall he reap. and I know that talk is cheap. But the heat of the battle is as sweet as the victory.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

A BMW can’t take you as far as a diploma.

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Well begun is half done.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

Men must know their limitations.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

It is natural to want to have a future.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.