You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

I’m different than most people. When I cross the finish line of a big race, I see that people are ecstatic, but I’m thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow. It’s as if my journey is everlasting, and there is no finish line.

What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

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

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

And winning is a huge thing for me.

Success is not a stop sign.

It’s absolutely normal that different human beings want to go different ways.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Once I realized that right thinking is vital to victorious living, I got more serious about thinking about what I was thinking about, and choosing my thoughts carefully.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

I want to put a ding in the universe.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

I gather from motivation around me – from a lot of personalities who have done well in their respective fields.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

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

I’m crazy and I don’t pretend to be anything else.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

I’m only as good as my last word, my last hook, my last bridge.

Genius is patience.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

Sometimes if you got a problem deep rooted in your life, it takes a little bit of time to overcome it in that area.

A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

My rule is to break one sweat a day.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

The highest result of education is tolerance.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

As I grow up, the lessons I learn in love and relationships and how we treat each other are hopefully maturing – hopefully.

Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.

Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.

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

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.