Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

There is probably a perverse pride in my administration… that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular. And I think anybody who’s occupied this office has to remember that success is determined by an intersection in policy and politics and that you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I’d follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I’ve been very lucky.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.

Working hard is very important. You’re not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.

Aim for the sky and you’ll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you’ll stay on the floor.

The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.

In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

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

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

The harder I work, the luckier I become.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

I think that success is having fun.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

The closest I ever came to getting married was just before I started singing. In fact, my first record saved my neck.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

I don’t believe I’ll ever get credit for anything I do in foreign affairs, no matter how successful it is, because I didn’t go to Harvard.

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

I’m always asked, ‚What’s the secret to success?‘ But there are no secrets. Be humble. Be hungry. And always be the hardest worker in the room.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

Football is a team game and none can survive or excel without the help of the other.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

It is no use saying, ‚We are doing our best.‘ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

Everybody could be an entrepreneur, but very few will become very rich entrepreneurs.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.