If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

My dad has kind of been the standard for me, he played 16 years in the league, and since I’ve been in the league, every year that I go through and deal with the scratches, the bumps and bruises, just the grind that it is to go through one NBA season.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

I will not be concerned at other men’s not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

I think that I’m perfect.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

Character is formed in the stormy billows of the world.

I can handle pain.

I know who I am, I know what I can and can’t do. I know what I will and won’t do. I know what I’m capable of and I don’t agree to do things that I don’t think I can pull off.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

If a whole bunch of people want to make your life a living hell, they’re gonna do it.

The reward of suffering is experience.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

I think people take me as seriously as I want them to. They take me as seriously as I take myself – let’s put it that way.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

You’re not a product of your nature. That is your genetic makeup or your nurture, the things that have happened to you. Of course those things affect you powerfully, but they do not determine you.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

I don’t focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then I don’t worry about it.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

What I want for my fans and for the world, for anyone who feels pain, is to lean into that pain and embrace it as much as they can and begin the healing process.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

Nobody is my boss.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I’ve had two cancer bouts in my years on the Court, and the first one, Justice O’Connor told me, ‚Now, you do the chemotherapy on Friday because you’ll get over it during the weekend and you can be back in court on Monday.‘

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

I never like being touched, ever. People used to say I held my breath when they were hugging me. I still do.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

By any accepted standard, I have had more than nine lives. I counted them up once, and there were 13 times I almost and maybe should have died.