Thanh Pham > Thanh's Quotes

“If you think you are beaten, you are
If you think you dare not, you don't,
If you like to win, but you think you can't
It is almost certain you won't.

If you think you'll lose, you're lost
For out of the world we find,
Success begins with a fellow's will
It's all in the state of mind.

If you think you are outclassed, you are
You've got to think high to rise,
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.

Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man,
But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!”
― Walter D. Wintle

“If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“But you see," said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons,and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“After all, tomorrow is another day!”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'.”
― Muhammad Ali

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
― Steve Jobs

“Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“More gold had been mined from the mind of men than the earth it self”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“The time will never be “just right.” Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: The Original 1937 Unedited Edition

“A quitter never wins—and— a winner never quits.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.

"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster.”
― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life... you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a ather. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... there is no act more wretched than stealing.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“We've learnt to appreciate and respect and love someone who's different from us. It is very easy to accept and love those who are like us, but to love someone different is very hard, and you helped us to do that.”
― Luis Sepúlveda, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done in life, any choice that I’ve made. But I’m consumed with regret for the things I didn’t do, the choices I didn’t make, the things I didn’t say. We spend so much time being afraid of failure, afraid of rejection. But regret is the thing we should fear most. Failure is an answer. Rejection is an answer. Regret is an eternal question you will never have the answer to. “What if…” “If only…” “I wonder what would have…” You will never, never know, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“People love to say, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” What they don’t say is, “And it would be nice if you gave him a fishing rod.” That’s the part of the analogy that’s missing.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“Learn from your past and be better because of your past,” she would say, “but don’t cry about your past. Life is full of pain. Let the pain sharpen you, but don’t hold on to it. Don’t be bitter.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“When it was time to pick my name, she chose Trevor, a name with no meaning whatsoever in South Africa, no precedent in my family It's not even a Biblical name. “It’s just a name,” he explains. “My mother wanted her child beholden to no fate. She wanted me to be free to go anywhere, do anything, be anyone.”
― Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird