It seems as if an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and extravagance by cleanliness and hard work.

Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.

I’ve always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

Dignify and glorify common labor. It is at the bottom of life that we must begin, not at the top.

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

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.

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.

I’ve sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don’t need sauce. I know he doesn’t even want you to pour sauce. And I’ve seen customers come in and do that, and I’ve seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I’ve seen him die a little inside.

I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

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.

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

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

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

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.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

Success isn’t supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There’s no guarantee you’re going to succeed. There’s nothing set in stone.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read – if not indeed write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.

I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

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.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, like you work hard for what you want in life. That your word is your bond; that you do what you say you’re going to do. That you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them and even if you don’t agree with them.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.

It doesn’t matter who you are – if you dream big and if you work really hard, you can achieve unimaginable results, and that’s really good for the nation.

It’s different from being 21 and you think there’s endless amount of opportunities. At 33, the ending is much, much closer.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

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.

If you young fellows were wise, the devil couldn’t do anything to you, but since you aren’t wise, you need us who are old.

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our stereotypes of age, education, language and income.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.

When you’re one of the leaders of the team, there are no days off.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

As a man sow, shall he reap. and I know that talk is cheap. But the heat of the battle is as sweet as the victory.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.