If you continue to keep low performers on your team, that are actually dragging the team down; you’re failing the whole team, and eventually, the whole team is going to fail.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don’t want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

The temptation to take the easy road is always there. It is as easy as staying in bed in the morning and sleeping in. But discipline is paramount to ultimate success and victory for any leader and any team.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern.

My old drama coach used to say, ‚Don’t just do something, stand there.‘ Gary Cooper wasn’t afraid to do nothing.

A revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

While we may lose heart, we never have to lose hope.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Keep a good attitude and do the right thing even when it’s hard. When you do that you are passing the test. And God promises you your marked moments are on their way.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

If I can be a leader, I will.

You look at another team’s style and how they do it, and you just want to understand how they’re doing it and see if you can learn something and maybe implement it into what your team does.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

I’m a slow worker; I’m, I think, a steady worker.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

God’s desire is that we excel.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Putin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.

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.

Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

Music is really driving my whole life.

The other day the President said, I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith that I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility. He paused, then said, would you like a puppy?

Hope is a waking dream.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

Do all you can to make your dreams come true.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

Man is not made for defeat.

The best leaders understand the motivations of their team members and know their people – their lives and their families. But a leader must never grow so close to subordinates that one member of the team becomes more important than another, or more important than the mission itself.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.