You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

I’m a genetic optimist.

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

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.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

I’m a big believer in doing things that make you uncomfortable. So, we live in a world where we want to be as comfortable as we can. And we wonder why we have no growth. We wonder why – when the smallest thing in our life gets difficult – we wonder why we cower and we run away.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

I’m fat, but I’m thin inside… there’s a thin man inside every fat man.

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

Yeah, I was a delinquent. It was when I was in the ninth grade. I was doing stupid stuff, and the cops came into the class. I was humiliated more than anything.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

Playing Etta James in the movie ‚Cadillac Records‘ really changed me. It was a darker character, and I realized that if anything is too comfortable, I want to run from it. It’s no fun being safe.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.

I can imagine it’s hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn’t know.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

I’ve been running a full marathon every year for more than 20 years, and my record is getting worse. Getting older, getting worse. It’s natural.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

There’s many ups and downs in the fight game.

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

I love imperfections.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

I have goals.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

Stay active. Read the Word. Worship with other believers. Continue to give. Keep learning and growing. Your faith will be unleashed!

Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

The reason I became 297 pounds is because that was comfortable. What was very uncomfortable was running. What was very uncomfortable was being on a diet. What was very uncomfortable was trying to face things that I didn’t want to face. And I also realized, when I was really big, I had no growth. Why? Because I was living comfortable.