The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

I have dreams, and I want to see them come to fruition.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

Religions get lost as people do.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

A BMW can’t take you as far as a diploma.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

In pop music, the public usually see the results – the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours – but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, chances are you won’t make it.

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

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

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

I don’t think a coach becomes the right coach until he wins a championship.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

Being is the great explainer.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

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.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

History is more or less bunk.

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

Success in training the boy depends largely on the Scoutmaster’s own personal example.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

I never felt settled or calm. You can’t really commit to life when you feel that.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‚Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?‘ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.