What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

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 can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

The Bible says that God has a reason for keeping us here; if He didn’t, He would take us to Heaven far sooner.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

I grew up as this very carefree, happy kid then things turned darker for me. Maybe it was because I saw that the world wasn’t as happy a place as I had hoped it would be for me.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

When I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

My freshman and sophomore years in high school, I spent a lot of time trying to get back on the right track. I was arrested multiple times by the time I was 16, so I had a little harder time trying to adjust like a lot of us do in high school.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Reproach is shame, blame, disgrace, disapproval and a disrespectful attitude toward yourself. When you’re under reproach, your behavior shows it.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

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.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

As is the case with most people in this game, I am driven by financial motives and creative motives; the question I had to answer is which motive I will give priority to?

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

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

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

When it comes to the qualifications that we should demand of our president, to start with, we need someone who will take the job seriously.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

What nourishes me also destroys me.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

Getting out of bed is like the foundation of the discipline, and I think it carries over into everything else.

Getting organized in the normal routines of life and finishing little projects you’ve started is an important first step toward realizing larger goals. If you can’t get a handle on the small things, how will you ever get it together to focus on the big things?

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

Whenever you give up something, you must replace it with something.

You can be happy where you are.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

I didn’t want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.

If we are not free, no one will respect us.