The quote database

But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often.

SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.

It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power.

Never with my consent shall an officer of the people, compensated for his services out of their pockets, become the pliant instrument of Executive will.

If we would promise we must put ourselves in a position to perform our promise.

The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.

The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort.

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

Ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will.

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.

the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy

Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam.

The transformation, moreover, is a chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent.

The busiest man needs no more hours of rest than the idler.

It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such as saying 'no' to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power.

Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.

The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will.

We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed.

We live subject to arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to obey.

Slavery cannot bear one ray of light, or the slightest criticism.

Convince me that liberty is not the inalienable birthright of every human being, of whatever complexion or clime, and I will give that instrument to the consuming fire.