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

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.

I’ve been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn’t feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.

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.‘

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

I’m of the school of thought where if you can’t sort something out for yourself then no one can help you.

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.

I don’t focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then I don’t worry about it.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

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.

When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Obedience brings success; exact obedience brings miracles.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

All ballplayers should quit when it starts to feel as if all the baselines run uphill.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

If you can be mentally stimulated by the workout and find out how to get through it, it’s more fun.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

Americans never quit.

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

Wit is educated insolence.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

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

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

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

Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I’m trying to pull out of the ground that doesn’t want to come out? I know I’ll win.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‚Thus far and no farther.‘

My mother never gave up one me. I messed up in school so much they were sending me home, but my mother sent me right back.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass the test.