It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.

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

Right now, we don’t have a very good relation with creation.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

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

I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

I just figured out that if I gave my all into this game – if I put everything into the fight business – then I would eventually run the fight business.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

I have retired, but if there’s anything that would kill me it is to wake up in the morning not knowing what to do.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

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

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

Happiness doesn’t depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

You’ve really got to start hitting the books because it’s no joke out here.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

They know enough who know how to learn.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

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

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

If you are a small company taking on a big company, you need to have a sense of humor.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

Highly functioning self-actualized people simply never imagine what it is that they don’t wish to have as their reality.