My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

We go to school to learn to work hard for money. I write books and create products that teach people how to have money work hard for them.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.

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 won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

Your life must be a progression towards ownership – first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy.

I need to do well and show I’m a worthy driver in F1.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

Glorious bouquets and storms of applause are the trimmings which every artist naturally enjoys.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.

I can’t make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I’m gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo – you can never get away from it.

When you want to do your homework, fill out your tax return, or see all the choices for a trip you want to take, you need a full-size screen.

I’m very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories.

I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.

There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‚Oh, you’re playing yourself.‘ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‚Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.‘ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

People are so caught in a routine, doing the same things over and over.

The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

You cannot be creative with people around you.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don’t think they’re doing art but are merely practicing a craft and working as good craftsmen. Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

At Real, psychological pressure on the players is much more serious than at United. This is good. At many clubs, you don’t know the consequence of playing badly.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

I don’t go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, ‚Let’s see if I can get this done today.‘

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.

I’m not really an actor, I’m a reactor; I’m a pitchman. That’s what I do best. Nobody can do it any better.

Well, I’m working all the time to stay out of trouble!

Friends are thieves of time.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

I can’t stand directors who try to micro-manage everything. When it happens these days I just walk off set, saying if they don’t like the way I’m doing it they can get someone else.

I played characters with villainous aspect. But out-and-out villain? No.

Actors know, with me they aren’t going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won’t spend yourself quickly.

Leisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.

When you are in good form, you keep hitting the target. You may have the best match but you may still not have the goals. But scoring is most important and it feels so good that I have been knocking them in. It really boosts the morale.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Devote each day to the object then in time and every evening will find something done.

I have so much that I want to do. I hate wasting time.

Never confuse motion with action.

A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.

Getting out of bed is like the foundation of the discipline, and I think it carries over into everything else.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every calling, is diligence.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.