You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

I grew up cursing a lot.

People who pity themselves think, ‚Why would I try to do anything? I’ll just fail.‘

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

For me, education was power.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

It is after all the greatest art to limit and isolate oneself.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

Either you run the day or the day runs you.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

I’m of the school of thought where, if you can’t sort something out for yourself, no one can help you. Rehab is great for some people but not others.

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

I didn’t know how to deal with success. If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.

More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other’s well-being, is source of happiness.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

The more nobly a man wills and acts, the more avid he becomes for great and sublime aims to pursue. He will no longer be content with family, country, and the remunerative aspect of his work. He will want wider organisations to create, new paths to blaze, causes to uphold, truths to discover, an ideal to cherish and defend.

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

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world.

There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.

Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.

What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.

There are no second acts in American lives.

You can’t hire someone to practice for you.

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.

A great man is always willing to be little.

Confidence is that feeling by which the mind embarks in great and honorable courses with a sure hope and trust in itself.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.