The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.

If you’ve got a plan, it’s not just like a pipe dream. You have a step-by-step list of things to do to get to your goal.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

I would hear stories about Steve Jobs and feel like he was at 100 percent exactly what he wanted to do, but I’m sure even a Steve Jobs has compromised. Even a Rick Owens has compromised. You know, even a Kanye West has compromised. Sometimes you don’t even know when you’re being compromised till after the fact, and that’s what you regret.

See, winners embrace hard work.

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

I’ve always believed that success for anyone is all about drive, dedication, and desire, but for me, it’s also been about confidence and faith.

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.

Think and grow rich.

I had a rough childhood coming up, and I just took all that negative energy and made it very positive for myself to drive me. I’m a very driven person. I have passion that almost scares people, just to be successful and make it no matter what.

Giving up cannot be an option.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

I want a president with a record of public service: someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase form and fortune for ourselves; we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

Above anything else, I hate to lose.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.

We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected.

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

There wasn’t much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult, but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in telling stories and building things.

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

I don’t get up, get dressed, go out, and think, ‚Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.‘

If you are full of motivation as a player, if you are full of concentration, I am open arms.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

I get really motivated when I put on the India jersey. It is a responsibility, so I want to perform in the best way I can.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

I will be unhappy if I know I have not accomplished something I should have done that was possible.

You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.

Everybody that’s successful lays a blueprint out.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Siren voices tell me, ‚You don’t have to keep going on.‘ And then you think, ‚I’m a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?‘ I don’t know. I like being a writer.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.

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

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I’ve got my Grammys on top of my piano and I look at them when I play.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

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