Only you can control your future.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

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

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

A lot of people are focused on taking over the world or doing the biggest thing and getting the most users. I think part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely.

Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

If your treat an individual… as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

To those of you who received honours, awards and distinctions, I say well done. And to the C students, I say you, too, can be president of the United States.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

I don’t feel pressure in a negative way. I like pressure. I feel excitement and calm at the same time. No pressure, no diamonds. I want pressure: pressure creates drama, creates emotion.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

My experience with power, you can maintain it, or you get it taken from you. You get you some newfound power and go crazy, and it get taken from you quick.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

I’m 31 now. I think I’m beginning to understand what life is, what romance is, and what a relationship means.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

The important thing is to be in love with something.

A passionate belief in your business and personal objectives can make all the difference between success and failure. If you aren’t proud of what you’re doing, why should anybody else be?

It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.

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

Anything that encourages people to pick up an instrument and play, I’m fully behind.

Nothing will work unless you do.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

Don’t ever play yourself.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

I’m just a kid that defied the odds. I’m just a kid that ignored the doubt. I’m just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I’m going to continue to go all the way.

Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.