It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Yeah, I was a delinquent. It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff, and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

I built a label at the same time I built a career.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life – it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Never find fault with the absent.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

Courage is grace under pressure.

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can’t take steps toward whatever your goal is.

I believe time wounds all heels.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

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

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.