I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

I’m definitely gaining new fans, and that’s the key of any success… gain more love.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

I am a grafter.

I don’t focus on the critics. Everyone who is making any difference in any field has critics. As long as I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, then I don’t worry about it.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.

I tend not to really think about what other people say. I’d rather just try and focus on what I’m doing, try and win basically.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger’s skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

‚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.‘

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t – to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions – ‚Get over it!‘

I would rather try to persuade a man to go along, because once I have persuaded him, he will stick. If I scare him, he will stay just as long as he is scared, and then he is gone.

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.

Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

If you are lucky enough to find something that you love, and you have a shot at being good at it, don’t stop, don’t put it down.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don’t be discouraged… just be willing to change.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

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

I don’t think about that. I wasn’t a kid growing up saying one day I’ll get an Oscar and make a speech. That wasn’t on my mind. So what I do is the best work I can do.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

I struggled with being a broke college graduate, and while all my friends were getting career jobs, I was working horrible part-time jobs. That’s why now, even when I get tired, I think, ‚This is what I asked for.‘

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

I just feel like, with rappers, there’s so much complacency. It’s like, ‚Oh, I’m a rapper. I’m successful. I make money. That’s all that matters.‘ But there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s happening.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

When I say something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

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

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

We will all fail in life, but nobody has to be a failure. Failing at a thing doesn’t make you a failure. You are only a failure when you quit trying.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

You are never too young to learn, never too old to change.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don’t invest any energy in them, because I know who I am.

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.

As an athlete, you’d better laugh at yourself when you slip in the mud.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area.