Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

A wet spot on the floor kind of put a scare in myself, so you never know inside those lines what might happen.

You get to a point where it’s like you can’t really do anything right, and people will pick on you for whatever decisions you make, so I just try and take no notice and get on with my music.

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

I don’t think about the end game. I’ve got lots to occupy my mind. It’s the rage that keeps me going.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.

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

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

There is no education like adversity.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

I always had a sense of discipline in me. However, there was a time when I couldn’t divide my time properly between off-field things and on-field assignments. The focus would be missing at times, and that would affect my preparation for matches. I managed to change that.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

When things are going bad, there’s going to be some good that’s going to come from it.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Maturity is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.

To some extent I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.

It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what the injury – unless it’s completely debilitating – I’m going to be the same player I’ve always been. I’ll figure it out. I’ll make some tweaks, some changes, but I’m still coming.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer’s as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer’s it’s the best form of Alzheimer’s to have.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

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.

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

I went through every emotion with tryna pursue what I’m doing, you know what I mean? And I think what’s gon‘ separate whoever’s gon go for something, that you ain’t gon‘ quit.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.