The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

Unless and until you inspire the people, you will not get results. Imposition will never give you the results. Inspiration will always give you the results.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

I like to do things quickly because I’m easily bored.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.

If you stop struggling, then you stop life.

It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

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.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

I’m not as goal obsessed as I am process obsessed.

I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

I’m not good at talking about myself.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Don’t work for recognition, but do work worthy of recognition.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Sometimes, if you begin to sing in a halfhearted mood, you can sing yourself up the ladder. Singing will often make the heart rise.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort – I think it keeps you going.

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‚I’m possible‘!

As long as your intentions are solid and about growth and progression and being productive and not being idle, then you’re doing good in my book.

I’ve never managed to keep a journal longer than two weeks.

I notice that young men go to the universities in order to become doctors or philosophers or anything, so long as it is a title, and that many go in for those professions who are utterly unfit for them, while others who would be very competent are prevented by business or their daily cares, which keep them away from letters.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

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.

One of my mentors schooled me on branding before it was a cliche term in the game.

The risk for me would be in not taking one – that’s the only thing that’s really risky for me.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

Do not let Sunday be taken from you. If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren’t characters I looked up to and identified with.

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

As far as I’m concerned, I’m a writer who’s writing books, and therefore, I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book wouldn’t you? You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Learning to live for others isn’t something that just comes naturally to anybody. You have to train yourself to do it.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.