When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

It’s rule number one, really – beating your teammate.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

I don’t think the ebbs and flows – get in great shape and then get out of shape and then see if you can get back into shape – is a good thing. So I prefer to keep my arm always ready to go.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

Who’s my hero? That’s a great question… Well, I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.

Success is not a stop sign.

God’s desire is that we excel.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

I want to thank The Beatles for almost single-handedly getting me out of writer’s block.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

I love the song ‚I Hope You Dance‘ by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

I do some kind of work, whether writing or painting or recording, on a daily basis. And it’s so essential that when I’m involved in the actual process, my so-called ‚real life‘ becomes almost incidental, which becomes worrying.

Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.

Even when you’re 50, you can make the effort to improve your standards.

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

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

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

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.

Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

The pagan loves the earth in order to enjoy it and confine himself within it; the Christian in order to make it purer and draw from it the strength to escape from it.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

I know that I always wanted things. I was always proud of my people, proud of my home, but I always wanted more. I think most people do.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

When California was wild, it was the floweriest part of the continent.

It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal.