We dissect failure a lot more than we dissect success.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

What a blind person needs is not a teacher but another self.

Some habits of ineffectiveness are rooted in our social conditioning toward quick-fix, short-term thinking.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

When you begin to worry, go find something to do. Get busy being a blessing to someone; do something fruitful. Talking about your problem or sitting alone, thinking about it, does no good; it serves only to make you miserable. Above all else, remember that worrying is totally useless. Worrying will not solve your problem.

‚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.

If everything was perfect, you would never learn and you would never grow.

If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.

I was always told as a child by my mother that you always have to be impeccable, even when you go to bed.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

My success rate speaks for itself.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

We will naturally pursue our goals on the strength of our own resources, skills and enterprise. But, we know that we will be more successful when we do this in partnership with the world.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

I have wasted my hours.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

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

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

Luck marches with those who give their very best.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

On the ‚Star,‘ you were forced to learn to write a simple declarative sentence. This is useful to anyone. Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Whatever good things we build end up building us.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

Life is wasted on the living.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

I’m not the most patient of people.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

Every seven years, I sit down and make a whole new plan.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

The idea of recognising your strengths and using them in as versatile a way as you can is cool to me.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

My favorite affirmation when I feel stuck or out of sorts is: Whatever I need is already here, and it is all for my highest good. Jot this down and post it conspicuously throughout your home, on the dashboard of your car, at your office, on your microwave oven, and even in front of your toilets!

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.