You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation – and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

The men who learn endurance, are they who call the whole world, brother.

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

Players now have a groin injury for months and months, and I often think they don’t really give a toss whether they’re playing or not because they’re getting paid anyway.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

When you are laboring for others let it be with the same zeal as if it were for yourself.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

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

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

I’ve had all six of my books reach the New York Times bestseller list, which is especially rewarding seeing as I flunked out of high school twice because I couldn’t write. It just goes to show you that we learn from our mistakes.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money.

When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you are going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

I think whether you’re having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

If I’ve got something do. I’m going to attack it. I’m going to attack that stress.

Nothing’s ever easy as long as you go on living.

It is natural to want to have a future.

You are victors, not victims!

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: ‚I’m with you kid. Let’s go.‘

I’ve been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn’t feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

Real firmness is good for anything; strut is good for nothing.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, ‚Thus far and no farther.‘

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Be the hunter, not the hunted.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.

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.

Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer to your goal.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

The best workers, like the happiest livers, look upon their work as a kind of game: the harder they play the more enjoyable it becomes.

A man is not paid for having a head and hands, but for using them.