“Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.”

Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

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.

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.

The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.

Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.

As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.

There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.

Don’t cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you’ve got.

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.

Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.

Bravery knows no age or gender.

I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

I feel like my secret magic trick that separates me from a lot of my peers is the bravery to be vulnerable and truthful and honest.

Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.