Surface R&B doesn’t work any more. The whole heartthrob thing, songs about unrealistic love and tearing your shirt off every show – that’s not really where it’s at any more. It’s becoming harder for those guys to sell records, and harder for them to succeed.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

To be successful, you need results in a row. You can’t win, lose, win, lose.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

I probably could have toured off ‚Trilogy‘ for the rest of my life. It definitely changed the culture. No one can do a trilogy again without thanking The Weeknd.

In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

I try to make it look easy, but the behind-the-scenes stuff is the challenge.

Without failure there is no achievement.

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

If you want to thrive in today’s economy, you must challenge the status quo and get the financial education necessary to succeed.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

I have to admit, I sometimes wonder how much more successful I would have been as a coach had it not been for my spending summers on the golf course. I could have watched more film, that’s for sure. One advantage Joe Paterno had over me was that he didn’t play golf.

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.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

Often, in the real world, it’s not the smart that get ahead but the bold.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

There’s something which impels us to show our inner souls. The more courageous we are, the more we succeed in explaining what we know.

The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I’m a successful writer.

No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

No one is ever successful at everything that they do.

I need to do well and show I’m a worthy driver in F1.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

It isn’t sufficient just to want – you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

Stylistically, I love make-up. I love doing my own make-up and stuff, but clothes-wise, I actually didn’t ever really care. Initially the fashion world was more interested in me than the music world, which was strange when I first started singing.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I’ve never been interested in that.

Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

I explain the law of compensation like this: ‚Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it.

Looking at 2014, I look back: we made more money off ‚Mailbox Money‘ than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

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.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

I’ve been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.