To do your best is no longer good enough. We now have to do the seemingly impossible.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

Someone told me something that stuck with me: ‚You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.‘ I’ve been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I’m just backtracking and trying to get back up there.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What’s the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

‚They‘ are the people that don’t believe in you, that say that you won’t succeed. We stay away from ‚They.‘

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

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.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.

Fame is ultimately about the cycles of desire and how to do away with them or manage them well.

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

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.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

On a given day, a given circumstance, you think you have a limit.

I don’t see how people are comfortable with seeing other people be great. You can be happy for anybody, but what is your excuse to not want to be great? These people are great because they just say, ‚I’ma do that,‘ and they do it. That’s it. There’s no scientifical process.

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure criticism without resentment.

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

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

I could give a flying flip about doing promo because, no disrespect, nobody put me in the position that I’m in.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

We’re just enthusiastic about what we do.

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others‘ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

If it doesn’t work out there will never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain.