The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

Sometimes in the past when I played something might make me lose focus, or I would go home after a game where I thought I could have played better and I would let it hang over my head for a long time when it shouldn’t.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

Things won’t get better dwelling on the past. Accept what has happened. Then move forward.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

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

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

I think that we have opportunities all around us – sometimes we just don’t recognize them.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

And I love that even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it – when we’re worried that the bill won’t pass, and it seems like all is lost – Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother, he just keeps getting up and moving forward… with patience and wisdom, and courage and grace.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

I think I have always had a little humor.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

No untroubled day has ever dawned for me.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

There’s two sorts of fear: one you embrace and one you should listen to and turn the other way.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.

What we think, we become.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

Being seventy is not a sin.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.