The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

No matter what happens on the field, getting an education makes you a winner.

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

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

Start wide, expand further, and never look back.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

I still learn, but I think it’s the best thing in life to have a kid.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

It’s life isn’t it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

I’m working at trying to be a Christian, and that’s serious business. It’s like trying to be a good Jew, a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Shintoist, a good Zoroastrian, a good friend, a good lover, a good mother, a good buddy – it’s serious business.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

I hoped to be able to write a novel which would enable me to live on it while I wrote the next.

If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do In His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing.

You might win some, you might lose some. But you go in, you challenge yourself, you become a better man, a better individual, a better fighter.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

I’ve been blessed to be somebody that’s been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it’s all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I’m saying, and it feels good ‚cause it’s good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

I’m afraid to fail again.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

To be able to look back upon ones life in satisfaction, is to live twice.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

All of our problems start in our minds.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

It’s true my father abused me and didn’t love and protect me the way he should have, and at times it seemed no one would ever help me and it would never end. But God always had a plan for my life, and He has redeemed me.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

I wish they would only take me as I am.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

What I am looking for is not out there, it is in me.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.