To add value to others, one must first value others.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

You might not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

An unimaginative person can neither be reverent or kind.

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

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

All of our problems start in our minds.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

We are all alike, on the inside.

I would like to be remembered as someone who did the best she could with the talent she had.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

Instead of being concerned that you have no office, be concerned to think how you may fit yourself for office. Instead of being concerned that you are not known, seek to be worthy of being known.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

I never sell a book. I sell myself. And the way to sell yourself is to be an instrument of love.

For me, ‚risky‘ is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.

I know I want to always do the best I can.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

There are people in the world who aren’t necessarily Christians, but they’re just naturally nice people who do a lot for other people. Those people will almost always be prosperous people.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specifications than it shall run noiselessly.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‚I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.‘

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.