The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

People are so caught in a routine, doing the same things over and over.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

‚Your Erroneous Zones’ was the book that went over the top simply because I believed in it so much.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

If you’ve got a talent, protect it.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Not one person can make or break what I’m doing, except me or God.

Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!

I was the kid that was the 199th pick that never had the body for it. People didn’t think I’d play one year in the NFL, and now I’m going on my 17th year.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

I’m always afraid of failing. I have to quiet that fear if I’m going to get up in the morning.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

When it all got taken away, I was becoming a young man. So I had to sacrifice to leave my family… Sleeping in my car, getting an apartment for a month and getting evicted the next month. Staying in the $25, $50 hotels.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.

With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything.

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

I myself would like to become more disciplined within my work.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

I often work by avoidance.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

I’m gonna be making records anyway, even if I had to sell ‚em out of the trunk of my car. I’m that kind of musician and singer.

I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

I know Elon, we’re very like minded in many ways. We’re not conceptual twins. One thing I want us to do is go to Mars, but for me it’s one thing. He’s singularly focused on that. I think motivation wise, for me I don’t find that Plan B idea motivating. I don’t want a plan B for Earth, I want Plan B to make sure Plan A works.

I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.

It doesn’t matter who you are – if you dream big and if you work really hard, you can achieve unimaginable results, and that’s really good for the nation.

The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Everybody has a purpose.

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

My honour was not yielded, but conquered merely.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

People want you to fail.

I don’t want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.

Most of the time, songs that I write end up being finished in 30 minutes or less.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.