Without tact you can learn nothing.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

As far as a glass ceiling, I feel that all you can do is give it your absolute best with whatever gifts the universe has given you. And if you make it in some way that other people can recognize, that’s fine. But even if you don’t quote-unquote make it, you’re fine if you’ve given it your whole heart and soul.

If what you are doing is not moving you towards your goals, then it’s moving you away from your goals.

There is no sin except stupidity.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

For me, education was power.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

You can become an even more excellent person by constantly setting higher and higher standards for yourself and then by doing everything possible to live up to those standards.

I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

There’s a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

Language is the dress of thought.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Once I realized that right thinking is vital to victorious living, I got more serious about thinking about what I was thinking about, and choosing my thoughts carefully.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

Style is that which indicates how the writer takes himself and what he is saying. It is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.

Start a part-time business and make as many mistakes as you possibly can while you still have your daytime job.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

I wish everyone well, but you need to focus on yourself. You need to stop putting your hand out. Everyone wants hand outs. Everyone wants things for free. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got go through the struggle, and you’ve got to get it.

Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

I think we need more idiot control.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

The Internet has compromised the quality of debate.

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.

We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

There’s room for role models who make mistakes.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

I do believe in self-help.