That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure love for Christ, your soul’s husband. Make Him the source, the center, and the circumference of all your soul’s range of delight.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

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

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

The job of art is to chase ugliness away.

However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

My life is my message.

Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music.

Great acts are made up of small deeds.

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

I respect Drake not only as a creative person but as a business mind as well. I think Drake’s important.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

I think New York has evolved in my work just the way the city has.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

My family’s lineage, we are warriors. The McGregor clan, we are warriors all through. We are famous all through the world for our fighting capabilities of all generations. So I have no doubt that’s stood to me and that led me down this path and gave me what I have.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

I just love Bowie. I think he’s the ultimate inventor.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

I know the blessing of having a dad who played 16 years in the league. That experience, and seeing him as an example, let me know that it’s possible. It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

I usually don’t like to ‚spoon feed‘ my audience, because I grew up idolizing story tellers who tell stories using symbolism, so it was in my nature to do the same.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

If thou art a man, admire those who attempt great things, even though they fail.

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

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.

I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.