You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

Begin noticing and being careful about keeping your imagination free of thoughts that you do not wish to materialize. Instead, initiate a practice of filling your creative thoughts to overflow with ideas and wishes that you fully intend to manifest. Honor your imaginings regardless of others seeing them as crazy or impossible.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

Needing to have things perfect is the surest way to immobilize yourself with frustration.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.

I would say things like ‚I am the greatest! I’m pretty! If you talk jive, you’ll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I’m pretty!‘ When white people heard me talking like this, some said, ‚That black man talks too much. He’s bragging.‘

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

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.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

It’s a funny old world.

There are people out there who hate me and who say I’m arrogant, vain, and whatever. That’s all part of my success. I am made to be the best.

What one fool can understand, another can.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

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

What you are comes to you.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

I’m 5’11, so when I wear heels, it’s definitely a really good view that I have. I’m, like, 6’2 when I wear heels, so I tend to wear cowboy boots a lot.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

I was so used to going out and winning state championships and playing in the postseason.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.