One thing is sure. We have to do something. We have to do the best we know how at the moment… If it doesn’t turn out right, we can modify it as we go along.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

You have to believe in your process. You have to believe in the things that you are doing to help the team win. I think you have to take the good with the bad.

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.‘

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

What one has to do usually can be done.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

My dad always said, ‚Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.‘

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I’m sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

Never mistake motion for action.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.

No one has ever drowned in sweat.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

I didn’t want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.

To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

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

You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

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

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.