When did I know I had talent? I think it started when I first started playing sports, organized sports.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

I have no delusions about my likability in every scenario. I know that in order to get things done the way you want them, oftentimes your position will be unpopular.

I’ve played with IVs before, during and after games. I’ve played with a broken hand, a sprained ankle, a torn shoulder, a fractured tooth, a severed lip, and a knee the size of a softball. I don’t miss 15 games because of a toe injury that everybody knows wasn’t that serious in the first place.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and… the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

After the first day of practice, there’s not one guy who’s playing at 100 percent or who feels great. Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day – it just hurts.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.

I am very happy to be signing for the best team in the world and especially proud to be the first Portuguese player to join United.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

My superhero has always been Tendulkar, and it will be Tendulkar for life. He is someone who has inspired me immensely. Just watching him play for India, I used to dream of winning games for India, because he used to do it single handedly.

Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.

I can take a beginner kid that has never danced in their lives, and I can teach them something, or I can take a really advanced dancer, and I can make them into a professional.

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

March is a month without mercy for rabid basketball fans. There is no such thing as a ‚gentleman gambler‘ when the Big Dance rolls around. All sheep will be fleeced, all fools will be punished severely… There are no Rules when the deal goes down in the final weeks of March. Even your good friends will turn into monsters.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

In England, you have stadiums in the middle of the city.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

My number one thing? Don’t overleverage yourself. Don’t say you can do something when you really can’t.

You know, God gave me a gift to do other things besides play the game of basketball.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

I don’t want to be the next Michael Jordan, I only want to be Kobe Bryant.

I put my flaws on front street. So the world accepted my flaws, so I don’t have any flaws.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

Hopefully I won’t be the last big splash at Under Armour.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

I don’t really read a lot of newspapers. I don’t pay attention to what is being said or written about me. I’ve had lots of experiences in the past when I got too much into it. That sort of diverts your focus.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.