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

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

I can’t do nothing just a little.

I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate.

Competition gives me energy. It keeps me focused.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle.

A brain of feathers, and a heart of lead.

Of course, I do everything for money.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

My experience has been that work is almost the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

If you want to shine like a sun, first burn like a sun.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

Logically, harmony must come from the heart… Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

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

I am not designed to come second or third. I am designed to win.

As your career grows, the list of things that makes you happy should not become smaller, it should become bigger.

I love that we can trust Barack to do what he says he’s going to do, even when it’s hard – especially when it’s hard.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Didn’t get promoted? Good. More time to get better.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Lots of young players have triumphed at United, so why can’t it happen to me? I’m not worried I’m young – it’s an incentive to do the best I can.

I remember the last three days that I was president, I never went to bed at all. I never went to bed until we had negotiated the final release of the hostages.

I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.

A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman.