My reputation grows with every failure.

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.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I always thought it was wrong for me to take credit for the work that I did. I don’t think that anymore.

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

Adjusting to the passage of time, I think, is a key to success and to life: just being able to roll with the punches.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

My dad has kind of been the standard for me, he played 16 years in the league, and since I’ve been in the league, every year that I go through and deal with the scratches, the bumps and bruises, just the grind that it is to go through one NBA season.

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

As pessimistic as I am about the nature of human beings and our capacity for atrocity and malevolence and betrayal and laziness and inertia, and all those things, I think we can transcend all that and set things straight.

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

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

I’m not the same man I used to be, I’m not out hell-raising, stuff like that. I am a changed man.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

Character is destiny.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

I have the Midas touch, in the way that when I hook up with a project, I feel, not speaking cocky or conceited, but there’s a confidence I have. I learned that from Muhammad Ali; I used to bodyguard him. He taught me about confidence. So when it comes to any job I work, I’m gonna do it good; I’m going to bring it over the top.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

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.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

I have had some cosmetic surgery, especially after I lost weight and stuff, and I’ve had my breasts lifted – but not injected. That would scare me to death, anyway.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‚I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.‘

No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

There are no second acts in American lives.

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.