We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I’m going to be alive, I want to be challenged – to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn’t an easy way, but it’s a rewarding way.

My dad has kind of been the standard for me, he played 16 years in the league, and since I’ve been in the league, every year that I go through and deal with the scratches, the bumps and bruises, just the grind that it is to go through one NBA season.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

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.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Must is a hard nut to crack, but it has a sweet kernel.

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.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was that they didn’t get that. No joke – I’d leave meetings crying all the time.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

I think I’m like most people – we fear the unknown and the things that have yet to come to pass, which are the very things that don’t deserve to be feared. When you give God complete control, it’s very hard not to be fearless.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

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.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.

As a young kid, I really wanted to be rich.

Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

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

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.