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

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

You may be always victorious if you will never enter into any contest where the issue does not wholly depend upon yourself.

Begin with the end in mind.

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.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

‚Perfection‘ to me is, I walk away from a situation and say, ‚I did everything I could do right there. There was nothing more that I could do.‘ I was a hundred percent, like the meter was at the top. There was nothing else I could have done. You know? Like, I worked as hard as I possibly could have. That’s perfection.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

You may delay, but time will not.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.

Discipline starts every day when the first alarm clock goes off in the morning. I say ‚first alarm clock‘ because I have three, as I was taught by one of the most feared and respected instructors in SEAL training: one electric, one battery powered, one windup.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

Time is money.

We record when I have a hole in the schedule. Sometimes night, sometimes afternoon, sometimes morning – we fit it in when we can. I prep for episodes all the time.

It takes me about two hours to run into Target. People always want a picture. They hem and haw, and they can’t spit the words out, so they waste about five minutes of my time just standing there getting ready for a picture. Just do it!

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.

Lost time is never found again.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.

All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can’t stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

I can’t play bridge. I don’t play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn’t seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

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

I think the reason I don’t read is because, when I’m reading, I feel like I’m missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where’s my girlfriend?

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

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

We always have time enough, if we will but use it aright.

You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

Let your Discourse with Men of Business be Short and Comprehensive.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

Time is more valuable than money, because time is irreplaceable.

When asked, ‚How do you write?‘ I invariably answer, ‚one word at a time.‘

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.