Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn’t want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

I don’t have many sad days.

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

My dear sisters, whatever your calling, whatever your circumstances, we need your impressions, your insights, and your inspiration. We need you to speak up and speak out in ward and stake councils.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

Quitting doesn’t enter my mind.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

I love to play. And fortunately, I don’t know a lot of musicians that suck. I know a bunch of really good ones, and they’re always up for playing.

For many people who are so lost in their minds, so much involved in their thought processes, the only moments they have when they are not trapped in that is when they are relating to their animal, their pet.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

The thing we fear we bring to pass.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Giving up cannot be an option.

Some people take defeat and losses a certain way. You see how some fighters take losses.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

I think the great part about what I do is that there’s a scoreboard. At the end of every week, you know how you did. You know how well you prepared. You know whether you executed your game plan. There’s a tangible score.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Carry the battle to them. Don’t let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive and don’t ever apologize for anything.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

Observe all men, thyself most.

God helps those who help themselves.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I got my own back.

Money does not change people, people change.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

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

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.