You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

We don’t want to wait on someone to hire us and give us a check. We want to create our own opportunities.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

There is an afterlife. I am convinced of this.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

If you are born an artist, you have no choice but to fight to stay an artist.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don’t just succumb.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

It was like I was in a tunnel. Not only the tunnel under the hotel but the whole circuit was a tunnel. I was just going and going, more and more and more and more. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

We can do anything we want to if we stick to it long enough.

People just don’t understand how obsessed I am with winning.

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

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

The way to know life is to love many things.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

The greatest story of all is Colonel Sanders. He didn’t start until he was sixty-six on a freeway bypass for his chicken shop. Anything is possible!

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

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

I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder.

I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

If it doesn’t work out there will never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain.