“Years later I read a statement that said, “A tot of people have a wishbone, but they don't have a backbone.” I thought, That's the truth. Wishing won't get us anything. We have got to dig in and do whatever we have to do to get”

“The sad fact is that people are poor because they have not yet decided to be rich. People are overweight and unfit because they have not yet decided to be thin and fit. People are inefficient time wasters because they haven’t yet decided to be highly productive in everything they do.”

“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.”

“Embrace the power of little things and you will build a tower of mighty things. Mighty things are made up varieties of little things put together!”

“Poqerty is the worst form of violence”

“Procrastination and excuses are sour spices that spoil the sweet taste of an effective work. They must hence, not be prompted under desire, partly because they are strictly time-stripping and also because they have no known essence.”

“The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.”

“I'm a good neurosugeon. That's not a boast but a way of acknowledging the innate ability God has given to me. Beginning with determination and using my gifted hands, I went on for training and sharpening for my skills. ”

“What is in the pencil is greater than what is around it. The talents in you are greater than the environment surrounding you. Your potentials will change your environment.”

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

“The quality, not the longevity, of one's life is what is important.”

“Un luchador por la libertad aprende, por el camino más duro, que es el opresor el que define la naturaleza de la lucha.”

“There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave, There are souls that are pure and true; Then give the world the best you have, And the best will come back to you. Madeline Bridges”

“It is easier to move from failure to success in from excuses to success.”

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.” —Letter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807 [Works 10:417--18]”