I’ve read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I’ve read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I’m not a big reader.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

I don’t think I get angry.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

I knew I wasn’t going to be a rocket scientist – let’s not be fools – but I wasn’t going to be a bum.

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

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

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren’t characters I looked up to and identified with.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

A man’s own manner and character is what most becomes him.

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

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

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Our lives are a sum total of the choices we have made.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

If you deserve it, go get it.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

I’m not a person that socializes very well.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

I can be a cruel person.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Things do not change; we change.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

I guess there is nothing that will get your mind off everything like golf. I have never been depressed enough to take up the game, but they say you get so sore at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.

If you try to protect yourself from pain, it becomes a stone in your heart. But the more you learn to face things, the more likely that stone can become a pearl.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.