It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

Frustration is a sign I am acting independently. The more you try your own way, the tighter the doors will stay closed.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

If you look at the movie ‚Belly,‘ I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I’m not in the game for the wrong reasons. I’m not in the game for the glory. I’m in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I’m a highly intelligent individual.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

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

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

Success is not a stop sign.

I worked my face off.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

They say somebody’s ‚street smart.‘ I feel like, if I got intelligence, it’s just a country smart.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

You have to stay faithful to what you’re working on.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

I have one yardstick by which I test every major problem – and that yardstick is: Is it good for America?

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I hope my story inspires everyone out there to keep hustling and chasing their dreams.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

This desk of mine is one at which a man may die, but from which he cannot resign.

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.