If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Measure your wealth by what you’d have left if you lost all your money.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn’t want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

Anything I do, I want to do it well.

If you’re bored with life – you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things – you don’t have enough goals.

People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Becoming an inspiration for kids is great. I want to inspire them to do whatever they want to.

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.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

If this were all to go away tomorrow, all the big success, I would still be very happy going from bar to bar playing music for people.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I use my celebrity status to inspire someone, to give them hope.

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

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto – I tell people you don’t have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‚Thus far and no farther.‘

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

Never, never, never give up.

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.