There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

And now, of course this is another thing I didn’t count on, that now as the governor of the state of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling.

I don’t think I could think of a single thing that’s more isolating than being famous.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.

I’ve made money, and I’ve been ripped off. I’ve had creative freedom, and I’ve been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

As you deal with more and more complex systems, it becomes harder and harder to find deep and interesting properties.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

Immediately after 11 September, the U.S. closed down the Somali charitable network Al-Barakaat on grounds that it was financing terror. This achievement was hailed one of the great successes of the ‚war on terror.‘ In contrast, Washington’s withdrawal of its charges as without merit a year later aroused little notice.

No one that encounters prosperity does not also encounter danger.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

We’re not going to go 82-0 and blow everybody out. We are going to be challenged.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

I guess the toughest things in translations are word play, which can never be reproduced exactly.

Old age may have its limitations and challenges, but in spite of them, our latter years can be some of the most rewarding and fulfilling of our lives.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

I found that part of it towards San Salvador extending from north to south five leagues, and the other side which we coasted along, ran from east to west more than ten leagues.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

Through every victory and every setback, I’ve insisted that change is never easy and never quick; that we wouldn’t meet all of our challenges in one term, or one presidency, or even in one lifetime.

You learn to know a pilot in a storm.

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand – good heavens! – that’s what I really call troublesome.

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges.

Boot camp sucks – SEAL training sucks – but you know what? That’s what makes you good.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

Writing is challenging work because it’s so easy to get consumed with how it’s going, what’s going to happen to it, who’s going to like or not like it. You want to get all of that stuff out of your head and just let the work flow.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

It’s hard to improve public education – that’s clear.

It’s a frustrating game because the situations so drastically change at different times over the course of the week, the game, the season. It feels like brain surgery at times.