We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

This guy Clubber Lang, I’ve been him all my life. He’s mean and hungry just like me.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

As soon as I accomplish one goal, I replace it with another one. I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just say to myself, ‚All right, well, I’d like to headline a tour,‘ and then when I get there, we’ll see what my next goal is.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Sometimes people make it seem like you have to have certain prerequisites or a crazy life story in order to be successful in this world. But the truth is you really don’t.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

There is little success where there is little laughter.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

‚Worry‘ is a word that I don’t allow myself to use.

I never saw myself as a folk singer.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man’s happiness really lies in contentment.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Small aim is a crime.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

I think there are a number of things that you can do to encourage your kids‘ dreams, but I do believe in speaking by experience of having a lot of help along the way, stumbling in the past. We’ve all stumbled, and we certainly all deserve to get up and walk again.

I write songs about stuff that I can’t really get past personally – and then I write a song about it and I feel better.