When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

To hold a man down, you have to stay down with him.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

I love playing under pressure. In fact, if there’s no pressure, then I’m not in the perfect zone.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.

Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

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

Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I’ll show you someone who has overcome adversity.

I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Rule number one is: Beat your team-mate.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

What by a straight path cannot be reached by crooked ways is never won.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

With Kansas, I had a four-year deal. The initial two months were real tough. I had to adjust a lot. Then, things started looking up.

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

You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

Courage is found in unlikely places.

The colonel replied that he didn’t care how my men had got the job done. He was happy that it had been accomplished. He said that, obviously, no matter how much or how little I knew technically, I was able to get the best out of people I worked with.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

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

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

I’m only as good as my last word, my last hook, my last bridge.

‚Your Erroneous Zones’ was the book that went over the top simply because I believed in it so much.

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

Everybody has a purpose.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.

I will prepare and some day my chance will come.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.