One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

There are a lot of inaccuracies out there when it comes to the SEAL training process. You will see guys carrying logs around on television. They think that the hardest part about being on a SEAL team is getting through that training. The fact of the matter is, if you have a good attitude, that training is fun. I had a blast.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

Waking up early was the first example I noticed in the SEAL Teams in which discipline was really the difference between being good and being exceptional.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

We will move forward, we will move upward, and yes, we will move onward.

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.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

Since the beginning, it was just the same. The only difference, the crowds are bigger now.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

Doubt grows with knowledge.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

I’ve noticed that when I am selling a lot of records, certain things become easier. I’m not talking about getting a table in a restaurant.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

In this business you have to develop a thick skin, but I’m always going to feel everything. It’s my nature.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

If you don’t feel safe as a child, you can’t learn.

The vibe in our locker room is real energetic and fun and real personable, I think from Day 1. That gets you through a lot of tough times, where in hard times, it might be common nature for guys to do their own thing and split up and become silent.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

You can sometimes play some really good football and not score.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be, as the egg is to the fowl; we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

Twitter is great to connect with fans and be transparent. I enjoy that aspect about it. But really, I’m still trying to figure it out.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures – they’re lying if they say they haven’t. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind – the product wasn’t distinct enough from Coca-Cola.

Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell – fantastic.

Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided upon is being carried out.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

The United States has made serious mistakes in the conduct of its foreign affairs, which have had unfortunate repercussions long after the decisions were taken.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

When I’m really interested in something, I get superfocused on that. And I can spend hours upon hours not getting tired of reading about it and still be interested to learn more about it.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

Nobody’s indispensable.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

You don’t lead by hitting people over the head – that’s assault, not leadership.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

If I have cash and I can’t figure a way to put it into real estate or my business, I hold it in gold and silver.

I’m not a one-man show. I was never that in my life, and I never want to be that.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

Eventually, all companies are replaced.