Pessimism never won any battle.

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

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

I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.

I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

If you deserve it, go get it.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

The starting point of all achievement is desire.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

If you look at anyone who has achieved great success and wealth, people like Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, or Lance Armstrong, they have all focused intensely in order to win.

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

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.

The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

There’s people that tried to celebrate when I lost that got nothing to do with it. That’s not the sign of a champion.

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

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

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.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

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

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

If you try to fight the course, it will beat you.

Dream and you shall become.

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.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

I always entertain great hopes.

What one has to do usually can be done.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

If I can be a leader, I will.

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.