Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

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

I’ve learned people are watching, so don’t do nothing stupid.

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

A man can do only what he can do. But if he does that each day he can sleep at night and do it again the next day.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

I feel you’re in charge of your own situation.

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

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

I’m not a bad person.

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

It must be quite mysterious to some people why I bother to carry on. Because, you know, I don’t sell that many records.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

If you’re not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you’re going to be punished for them, then what’s your motivation to continue?

If you raise your children to feel that they can accomplish any goal or task they decide upon, you will have succeeded as a parent and you will have given your children the greatest of all blessings.

If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

I’m not very ambitious at all.

Think and grow rich.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

I don’t need to be vindicated, and I don’t want attention.

Being self-made means never making an excuse as to why you can’t take steps toward whatever your goal is.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

If my businesses or my investments are not profitable, then I don’t eat. And I like to eat.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.