Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

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.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

Whether happiness may come or not, one should try and prepare one’s self to do without it.

Over the years, I’ve learned that a confident person doesn’t concentrate or focus on their weaknesses – they maximize their strengths.

Learn to think continentally.

Finite to fail, but infinite to venture.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

I like working. That’s when I’m feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that.

I didn’t want to be a writer, but I became one. And now I have many readers, in many countries. I think that’s a miracle. So I think I have to be humble regarding this ability. I’m proud of it and I enjoy it, and it is strange to say it this way, but I respect it.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Don’t worry about motivation. Motivation is fickle. It comes and goes. It is unreliable – and when you are counting on motivation to get your goals accomplished, you will likely fall short.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure.

Want balance in your life? Then sure, get your own act together, but don’t forget four powerful disciplines of execution in your team and organization.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

I’m only going to stand before God and give an account for my life, not for somebody else’s life. If I have a bad attitude, then I need to say there’s no point in me blaming you for what’s wrong in my life.

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

You know, not to sound corny or nuthin‘, but I felt like a fighter comin‘ up, man. I felt like, you know, I’m being attacked for this reason or that reason, and I gotta fight my way through this.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

I see fighters make funny videos about me and stick them on Facebook and get 20 likes. When I make a video, I sell it to Fox and make seven figures. That’s the difference.

I get so excited when a song I wrote that’s very personal to me goes No. 1 and I look down and see people singing the words back to me.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

Never complain. Never explain.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

The one thing about the business of entertainment is that you have to learn patience.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

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

Without tact you can learn nothing.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

To excel at the highest level – or any level, really – you need to believe in yourself, and hands down, one of the biggest contributors to my self-confidence has been private coaching.

Thanks to my fans that have been with me from the beginning, I was able to sell out arenas on my own.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.