What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

Hence it comes about that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.

We have the tendency to run away from suffering and to look for happiness. But, in fact, if you have not suffered, you have no chance to experience real happiness.

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

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

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

I wasn’t sure of the exact mindset you should have when you go into a Test match. So I probably became too defensive when I played my first Test match. Short balls in one-day cricket, I have never thought of just defending.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

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

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

Dissents speak to a future age.

Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.

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 learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Divide and rule, the politician cries; unite and lead, is watchword of the wise.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

I tend not to look back and dwell on a project once it is finished.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.

You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages.

Losing is tough.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

Americans never quit.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Many people don’t understand ring control. They think they do until they’re against someone who really understands how to set traps, how to create holes in the octagon that they fall into.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.