Mindset & Motivation

"If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed."

"Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished."

"I shall make you all subjects of envy to those who stayed at home... go then, and tell them that your King Alexander led you across the Hellespont and conquered the Persian Empire."

"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

"Trust yourself. Break the rules. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't listen to the naysayers. Work your butt off. And give something back."

"Cast down your bucket where you are—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded."

"Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage."

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water."

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome."

"It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique."

"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'"

"Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in his career—the most in the history of baseball. But you don't hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward."

"Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times."

"To educate a man is to educate an individual; to educate a woman is to educate an entire family."

"Don't give up. Don't ever give up."

"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default."

"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable."

"It's necessary to know that it is possible that you can choose your outcome."

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

"You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too."

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking."

"Sisters and Brothers of America... It fills my heart with joy unspeakable to rise in response to the warm and cordial welcome which you have given us."

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena..."

"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife."

"For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day... how our country was flourishing. I assume you did not propose me to this office so that I, too, should lie to you."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country."