The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

There is no real limit to how much better a person who really commits to getting better can get. Every manager has the potential to become an excellent manager for the rest of his or her career.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

Most of us enter adult life with great ambitions for how we will start our own ventures, but the harshness of life wears us down. We settle into some job and slowly give in to the illusion that our bosses care about us and our future, that they spend time thinking of our welfare.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.

A man’s character is his fate.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

Whatever work you do, you think are you doing this for the good of the nation? That’s the basic training. The other basic training is discipline. Your life should be disciplined. The other thing they say is what work you get, do it well.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

They say somebody’s ‚street smart.‘ I feel like, if I got intelligence, it’s just a country smart.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn’t work like that… There’s a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

I give opinions, not advice.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won’t spend yourself quickly.

I’m only as good as my last word, my last hook, my last bridge.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

If you want to be successful, it’s just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

I’m always happy to blow up any misconceptions that people have about stage school cos everyone thinks it’s really nasty there but it’s not.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.