“In the race for success, speed is less important than stamina.”

Honesty is the cornerstone of character.

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.

The man who has done his level best… is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.

The bell of public opinion is today making the Morgan-Rockefeller-Vanderbilt class jump. Nor are the strongest of our corporations immune. The railroads have had to jump pretty lively, and certain gigantic industrial combinations are also being put through their paces.

The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn.

The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world.

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.

There is no fun equal to the satisfaction of doing one’s best. The things that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach of almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.

Vitally important for a young man or woman is, first, to realize the value of education and then to cultivate earnestly, aggressively, ceaselessly, the habit of self-education.

Success consists of being and doing, not simply accumulating.

A price has to be paid for success. Almost invariably those who have reached the summits worked harder and longer, studied and planned more assiduously, practiced more self- denial, overcame more difficulties than those of us who have not risen so far.

To make headway, improve your head.

Upon our children-how they are taught-rests the fate-or fortune-of tomorrow’s world.

The way to make a true friend is to be one. Friendship implies loyalty, esteem, cordiality, sympathy, affection, readiness to aid, to help, to stick, to fight for, if need be. … Radiate friendship and it will return sevenfold.

Lady Luck generally woos those who earnestly, enthusiastically, unremittingly woo her.

A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.

If he’s having a good day and running the right race, nobody can beat Frank Shorter at 10,000 meters, nobody except me.

No one will ever win a 5,000-meter by running an easy two miles. Not against me.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, ‘I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.’ It’s more than just a race, it’s a style. It’s doing something better than anyone else. It’s being creative.

I was not in the race to become a chief minister. I had never thought about it.

The Indians said the bones were those of a race of people three times the size of a man.

It is dangerous and unbelievably fast and entirely different from the kind of track I am used to racing on.

Race hate isn’t human nature; race hate is the abandonment of human nature.