Les Brown

If you take responsibility for yourself you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

You don’t have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great.

You already have every characteristic necessary for success if you recognize, claim, develop and use them.

You never fail until you stop trying.

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.

Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.

If you stop at general math, you’re only going to make general math money.

As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.

For all the hard times and tough challenges I faced during different periods of my life, I think I was lucky or blessed or both. When things looked bleak, a good guide would appear to set me straight. Someone once asked me about the villains who got in my way, the bad guys who wanted to trip me up or take me out. I don’t remember any. Maybe it’s my nature to remember the good and forget the bad, or maybe it’s my destiny to lock onto the righteous for help.

There were no role models, there were no other people I knew who were dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. I had no idea if this was a stage I was going through or not. But I go to the draft board in Brooklyn and I fill out the form and there was a question that said ‘Do you have homosexual tendencies?’ and I check yes. But where-ever I was on line I’d see people I went to high school with and I was afraid of anyone knowing this about me so I kept on falling back into line and falling back into line. If you said you had homosexual tendencies they sent you to a psychiatrist. He said ‘I see here you’ve checked the box?’ And I said ‘yup’. He said ‘So do you think you’d have a problem serving in the armed forces?’ I said well you know ‘So many men.’ And I was out of the service.

Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission.

It takes a person who is wide-awake to make his dream come true.

The greatest effort is not concerned with results.

Don’t be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.

Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.

You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.