It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people. Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.

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

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Competition is a sin.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

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

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

I do believe in self-help.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

There is no man on Earth or devil in Hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

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

When you’re around me and really see that all I do is live and breathe for my work, it’s not strange, it’s just Gaga.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

We don’t want to wait on someone to hire us and give us a check. We want to create our own opportunities.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

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.

My inspiration is R. Kelly, Michael Jackson, and Prince – for the vocals, anyway.

I’m always disappointed when people don’t live up to their potential. I know that a number of people look down on themselves and consequently on everybody who looks like them. But that, too, can change.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

I think the great part about what I do is that there’s a scoreboard. At the end of every week, you know how you did. You know how well you prepared. You know whether you executed your game plan. There’s a tangible score.

When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

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 you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.

The harder I work, the luckier I become.

Once you start a working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest.