Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

I’m dying to be a great dad one day, whenever that day comes.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

No one could have been nicer, classier nor better looking than Dick Clark. I’ve had a crush on him since I was a teenager.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

There’s a silly notion that failure’s not an option at NASA. Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

What one has, one ought to use: and whatever he does he should do with all his might.

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

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.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

When you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up. Once you get to the point where Hollywood sees that you create results, then the demand for you becomes higher.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

My father was not a failure. After all, he was the father of a president of the United States.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

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.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.

Bob Houghton is a great coach and I am confident that the national team will do well under him.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

My success comes in making fun of whatever you’re doing. That’s my way.

Well done is better than well said.

It’s a rule to give all, and it can make the difference if you work more. If you don’t have to give all, and you still win, what’s this?

Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

We’re all dreamers.

People in Latin America… love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Dream and you shall become.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

The more I see of deer, the more I admire them as mountaineers. They make their way into the heart of the roughest solitudes with smooth reserve of strength, through dense belts of brush and forest encumbered with fallen trees and boulder piles, across canons, roaring streams, and snow-fields, ever showing forth beauty and courage.