My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

Really, you don’t lose until you stop trying.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

My experience is listen, see, feel – and then think about what you change.

Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.

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

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Worshipping is stripping ourselves of our idols, even the most hidden ones, and choosing the Lord as the centre, as the highway of our lives.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

Life is either a great adventure or nothing.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

It’s a frustrating game because the situations so drastically change at different times over the course of the week, the game, the season. It feels like brain surgery at times.

You shall, I question not, find a way to the top if you diligently seek for it; for nature hath placed nothing so high that it is out of the reach of industry and valor.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

It’s like a muscle – if you stop going to the gym or stop running, you get weak. The military teaches you these great values, but we don’t keep up the discipline on our own, and we lose it. So wherever you go, keep that discipline up.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

This ain’t fun. But you watch me, I’ll get it done.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

The courage we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

Never, never, never give up.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

It’s physical. 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.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don’t just succumb.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?