In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

Nature has always had more force than education.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

We have a big appetite for putting people down but, at the heart of everyone, there’s enough room for all of us to succeed.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

Magic has five championships. I have five championships. I’m pretty sure we both know what we’re doing.

If you are surrounded by your competition and you are outworking these people, outmaneuvering these people, it’s hard not to let your confidence take over. It just builds and builds and builds.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

The richest people in the world look for and build networks; everyone else looks for work.

I’ve never wanted to use my age as a gimmick, as something that would get me ahead of other people. I’ve wanted the music to do that.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

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

I believe that of all the things I have done, exciting though many of them have been, there’s no doubt in my mind that the most worthwhile have been the establishing of schools and hospitals, and the rebuilding of monasteries in the mountains.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

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.

No decent career was ever founded on a public.

Information is not knowledge.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

There is a lot of pressure put on me, but I don’t put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel if I play my game, it will take care of itself.

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.

I wanted to race cars. I didn’t like school, and all I wanted to do was work on cars. But right before I graduated, I got into a really bad car accident, and I spent that summer in the hospital thinking about where I was heading. I decided to take education more seriously and go to a community college.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

If you give a person a fish, they’ll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they’ll fish for a lifetime.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

It’s all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you’re properly trained.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of ‚like‘ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

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

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.

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function – that’s important, and fine, and I support it.