Your ethical muscle grows stronger every time you choose right over wrong.

If you're experiencing no anxiety or discomfort, the risk you're taking probably isn't worthy of you. The only risks that aren't a little scary are the ones you've outgrown.

Most people confuse wishing and wanting with pursuing. You must place your trust in action.

Optimism inspires, energizes, and brings out our best. It points the mind toward possibilities and helps us think creatively past problems.

No sense being pessimistic. Wouldn't work anyway.

Too much attention on problems kills our faith in possibilities.

If you must doubt something, doubt your limits.

Excellence calls for character . . . integrity . . . fairness . . . honesty . . . a determination to do what's right. High ethical standards, across the board.

So let your deepest desires direct your aim. Set your sights far above the 'reasonable' target. The power of purpose is profound only if you have a desire that stirs the heart.

We can't win the struggle for high standards if we just talk a good game . . . we've got to play a good game.

Trust is the glue that holds relationships together.

Anything that had happened once on Earth should be expected millions of times elsewhere in the Universe

What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first.

You don't see the world as it is, you see it, as you are.

After me there are no more jazz singers . . . It's a crime that no little singer is back there sockin' it to me in my field. To keep it going, to keep it alive, because I'm not going to live forever.

Many have fought for and even lost their lives to end segregation, to win the right to vote. It disappoints me to now have to cajole people to register and to vote.

We think we do so much for the poor, but it is they who make us rich

I've been on every diet in the world. I've been on Slim-Fast. For breakfast you have a shake. For lunch, you have a shake. For dinner, you kill anyone with food on their plate.

Healthy feet can feel the very heart of Mother Earth.

I definitely shut down sometimes. I always just go into my own little cocoon and write, and I surround myself with as much music as possible.

Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.