Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it.

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

I don’t focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then I don’t worry about it.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

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

Quitting doesn’t enter my mind.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Whether you want to go into music, whether you want to be a lawyer, whether you want to be President of the United States, the bottom line for all of you is that you have got to get your education.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

I don’t want to hear the word ‚can’t.‘

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

I don’t let even a day go by wherein I don’t give at 100 per cent.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

I just kind of wake up with a new idea and new dreams every day, and I follow that dream, as they say.

Take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly, and try another. But by all means, try something.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

I’m a can-do girl.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.

Life’s a rollercoaster. You’re up one minute; you’re down one minute. But who doesn’t like rollercoasters?

We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

People always tell you, ‚Be humble. Be humble.‘ When was the last time someone told you to be amazing? Be great! Be great! Be awesome! Be awesome!

The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Everyone, no doubt, remains first and foremost a man of his own country and continues to draw from it his motive force.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

I didn’t want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.

Myths can’t be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

In everything, satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

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

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

Gentleness doesn’t get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

Everything rises and falls on leadership.