Echoes

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

Relentless toil conquers all.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution.

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

I will either find a way, or make one.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Through hardship to the stars.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.

Greatness means strife for nation and man alike. A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

I will either find a way or make one.

It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus.

It seems to me that the simple acceptance of this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facing not a few of the problems that confront us from without and from within. As regards internal affairs, it should teach us the prime need of remembering that, after all has been said and done, the chief factor in any man's success or failure must be his own character—that is, the sum of his common sense, his courage, his virile energy and capacity. Nothing can take the place of this individual factor.

Don't judge the future of a person based on his present conditions, because time has the power to change black coal to shiny diamond.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

Through endurance we conquer.