Quotes

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate"

"Find your calling, and excel at it"

"Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams."

"Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement."

"Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right"

"These are the days that must happen to you."

"Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow."

"If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly."

"Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer."

"Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action."

"Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

"Do it or don't do it."

"It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself,. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet."

"It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot."

"You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God."

"One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it."

"I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination"

"Hesitation is fatal; once an action is begun, it must be followed through with the utmost exertion of the will."

"in order to succeed, you must first survive"

"If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough."

"Pain will leave once it is done teaching you"

"All we have is the present moment and an imagination"

"My life has left me uniquely unfit for constraint."

"The words you speak become the house you live in"

"Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself."

"Attack life, its going to kill you anyways"

"You can’t fake the funk"

"Winning cures all"

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor"

"The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that's very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you'll want to change life and make it better, cause it's kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

"Life without a design is erratic. As soon as one is in place, principles become necessary. I think you’ll concede that nothing is more shameful than uncertain and wavering conduct, and beating a cowardly retreat. This will happen in all our affairs unless we remove the faults that seize and detain our spirits, preventing them from pushing forward and making an all-out effort."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away."

"The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil."

"Anger I can do something with. Sadness, fear, self-pity, self-doubt? They are inwardly focused. They keep you locked inside yourself. They’re useless. Anger is outwardly focused. Anger wants to take action. Anger is useful. Are you ready to use it?"

"Why is sex the definition of being close to someone? Just because you climb a mountain doesn’t mean you love it."

"Give every day the chance to become the most beautiful day of your life."

"I’m just an example of the fact that there’s something for everyone to do if they just want to do it."

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."

"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."

"You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."

"You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice."

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

"Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people."

"Where the fear, there is your task!"