The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

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

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

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

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Where fear is, happiness is not.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

What we won when all of our people united must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.

In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

I have a self-defense mind. I’ve had it all my life.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

I always wanted to do things right and represent myself as somebody that took the art serious and someone that took the business serious also, so I had time to weigh the options and figure it out and do my best to create the situation that was ideal.

Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

People who pity themselves think, ‚Why would I try to do anything? I’ll just fail.‘

On the whole, we think of our consumers – other judges, lawyers, the public. The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it’s better to have it clearer than confusing.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people’s minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

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

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

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

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.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

Every President wants to do right.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.