No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.

It’s not essential for me to have a big debut week; it’s not essential for me to have big radio records.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

If a small-town boy like me who bagged groceries was able to make his dreams come true, you can too.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

To lead people walk behind them.

You have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

When I was younger, I felt pressure to become someone else once I became successful.

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

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

If you look at my life, generally, I’ve been put in situations which were difficult and which I conquered.

Irrespective of whether you have talent or not, one has to work hard. Just being talented doesn’t mean anything; you can end up wasting it before you realize.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn’t be carried off. He walked off.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

I love the name of honor, more than I fear death.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

Pessimism never won any battle.

Put it this way: If I asked, ‚How’s business?‘ and you say, ‚Boomin‘ or ‚Amazing,‘ I already know the answer.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead.

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort – I think it keeps you going.

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if – the probable outcome is failure.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, I guess.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.