What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

It’s not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn’t sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

If you’re in this business and you are scared, then you better do something else.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human nature.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

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.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Invest three percent of your income in yourself (self-development) in order to guarantee your future.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

So many people have this idea: I want to achieve something great or be somebody great. And they neglect the step that leads to greatness. They don’t honor this step at this moment because they have this idea of some future moment where they are going to be great.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline, that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.

Protect your enthusiasm from the negativity of others.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

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

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

Let go of yesterday.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

In order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times. That is what we do.

Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

I still wanna rap better than everybody else, and I wanna say important things.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

Once I’ve decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

You can never get enough of what you don’t want.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.

I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

I’ve always strived to be successful, not famous.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?

The only shame is to have none.

I thought I couldn’t make a difference because I was too small.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

My earliest books focus almost entirely on psychological tools to help readers employ effective commonsense approaches to problems. There are no references to God or a higher self in the first 15 or so years of my publishing history.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.