When you tell a recruiter that you’re almost 300 pounds and you want to be a SEAL, it doesn’t go too well. I got hung up on a lot.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

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.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

I pass my life in preventing the storm from blowing down the tent, and I drive in the pegs as fast as they are pulled up.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

We are never defeated unless we give up on God.

If you get knocked down – setbacks in life, like applying for a job if they don’t hire you – keep trying, keep getting up, keep doing it.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Any man who has had the job I’ve had and didn’t have a sense of humor wouldn’t still be here.

What keeps me going is goals.

This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

With drive and a bit of talent, you can move mountains. I know. I’ve done it.

My dad always said, ‚Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.‘

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

Contemplation of life after retirement and life after death can help you deal with contemporary challenges.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Founding a company is hard. Most of it isn’t smooth. You’ll have to make very hard decisions. You have to fire a few people. Therefore, if you don’t believe in your mission, giving up is easy. The majority of founders give up. But the best founders don’t give up.

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.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

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.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

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

He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!

I believe in the battle-whether it’s the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.

I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

In the world today many people rightfully feel entitled to have success and the good things in life, but they usually understand it will require sacrifice and hard work.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

I definitely wasn’t anything special when I first started but I think I adapted quite quickly into racing and it became a bit better slowly. All of cadets, the first four years of karting, I only won one proper race, one! Which was the British Open Championship at PFI and I started 21st and I won.

Go as far as you can see; when you get there you’ll be able to see farther.

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

Why is it that although it takes us years to get into our messes, we expect God to get us out of them in a few days?

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing so until the end.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country’s cause.

We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

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.