Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly lighted interior sets.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.

From infancy, I have relied on the fiercely sweet spirits of black men; and this is abundantly clear in my work.

In many ways, September feels like the busiest time of the year: The kids go back to school, work piles up after the summer’s dog days, and Thanksgiving is suddenly upon us.

How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!

It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it.

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

It feels good to have your work respected again.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he’s terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he’s a terrific actor.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

Test a servant while in the discharge of his duty, a relative in difficulty, a friend in adversity, and a wife in misfortune.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

Women, like men, should try to do the impossible. And when they fail, their failure should be a challenge to others.

Each generation faces different issues and challenges, but our standard must always be measured by God’s word.

You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It’s scary.

I’ve known Ben Stiller for a minute. One of my first movies was ‚Along Came Polly.‘

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

People tried to change my concept of what music is. That music is work, but it’s not like that.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

I don’t think I am evangelical in my work.

Let’s face it. Umpiring is not an easy or happy way to make a living. In the abuse they suffer, and the pay they get for it, you see an imbalance that can only be explained by their need to stay close to a game they can’t resist.

Where there is no work, there is no dignity.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

My life is a struggle.

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.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

We’re not going to go 82-0 and blow everybody out. We are going to be challenged.

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.