The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

Libraries raised me.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

I’ve had a few semi-toxic relationships, but it’s not what I look for when I’m seeing someone.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Only the insecure strive for security.

The human heart is the same the world over.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

The man who has no problems is out of the game.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

If you get knocked down – setbacks in life, like applying for a job if they don’t hire you – keep trying, keep getting up, keep doing it.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

I have practically no private life. I’m already used to this and ready for it. Yes, sometimes it is hard, but it is the choice I made.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

I’m a whopping 5 foot 4 inches tall. I’m not going to get any taller.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

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

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

I’ve had some ‚riotous excursions of the human spirit‘ alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it’s time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way – they earned their stripes in combat.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

My life is a struggle.

I think the best thing I ever did with my life was stand up and say I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

I used to worry about every little thing, trying to figure out every problem. Well, I realize now how foolish that was. I was no more in control of my life than the man on the moon.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

My dad always said, ‚Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.‘

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.