People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

This industry has been really good to me. It’s been a great life. I’m not through yet. I’m ready when you are, Mr. DeMille.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

Small aim is a crime.

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

Even the best teams can fail. Celebrities can fade. There is only One in whom your faith is always safe, and that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you need to let your faith show!

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

It’s been my experience in politics that you can try and plan it out: ‚I’m going to hit the three ball which will hit the eight ball.‘ You’ve just got to go run and try to do everything right. And then have a little luck.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Never let yesterday use up too much of today.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from ‚the bush‘ could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

We were poor. But my mom never accepted that. She worked hard to become a residential contractor – got her master’s with honors at the University of New Orleans. I used to go to every class with her. Her father was my paternal figure.

Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

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.

I’ve been blessed to be somebody that’s been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it’s all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I’m saying, and it feels good ‚cause it’s good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don’t back down.

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

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

If you tell me there’s something I can’t do, I’ll want to do it even more. Especially when it comes to entertaining.

Applause waits on success.

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.

When a person is going through hell, and she encounters someone who went through hellish hell and survived, then she can say, ‚Mine is not so bad as all that. She came through, and so can I.‘

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

I’ve never had writer’s block.

Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.

It doesn’t matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me… every day, they make me proud… every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

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

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

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.

A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

The eagle has no fear of adversity. We need to be like the eagle and have a fearless spirit of a conqueror!

I’m just going to say it: I’m pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

The battle is all over except the ‚shouting‘ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.