The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

A good name is rather to be chosen than riches.

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.

The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future in life.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

Successful people will always tell you you can do something. It’s the people who have never accomplished anything who will always discourage you from trying to achieve excellent things.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

I have a very good family. I’m very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It’s one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

History is more or less bunk.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Life is wasted on the living.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

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

Freedom is relative.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

Treat failure as a lesson on how not to approach achieving a goal, and then use that learning to improve your chances of success when you try again. Failure is only the end if you decide to stop.

You can be rich in spirit, kindness, love and all those things that you can’t put a dollar sign on.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might – but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

I’ve actually taken companies public, I’ve actually busted companies, I’ve actually gone broke.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.