“What I’ve experienced is that I can’t know the future. I can’t know if anything that I do will change what happens tomorrow. I can’t know with certainty, but what I do know is if I do nothing, nothing will change.”

“My belief is that personal freedom cannot grow beyond personal responsibility. The more people that learn to be fully accountable for their lives, the more freedom each of us can enjoy and the more fulfilling all of our lives will be.”

“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue.”

“Well done is better than well said.”

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice. To make an end is to make a beginning.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“It's not about what I can get, it's what I can give.”

“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“Don't let your struggle become your identity.”

“I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

“Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”

“Around here we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we're curious...and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

“Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves, that you forget, truly forget....how much you have always loved to swim.”

“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”

“Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit light a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it..”

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

“The heart has reasons that reason doesn't understand.”

“…A great gift has been made to each and every one of us—the privilege of living in the world for a short span of years and the opportunity of doing our part to help the less fortunate; to improve civilization; to advance knowledge, both the scientific knowledge of men and the wisdom which is from above. The gift of human life and the opportunity which is ours to serve others…should be regarded as a sacred trust.”

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. ”

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. ”

“There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings. ”

“The struggle of today, is not altogether for today–it is for a vast future also”

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”

“For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.”

“Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.”

“The theme you choose may change or simply elude you, but being your own story means you can always choose the tone. It also means you can invent the language to say who you are and what you mean.”

“Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.”