If you're healthy, if you don't get sick much, if you don't go to the doctor much or use your health insurance much, you are a genetic lottery winner. It has nothing to do with the way you live, nothing to do with doing the right things. It's just sheer luck, and you are gonna pay for that.

I like to consider myself a star - a star, that when you look in the sky, it's always there. And on a clear night... a shooting star comes by, and get a little thrill, and you make a little wish. You need both types of stars, the shooting and the constant stars. The heavens include them all.

My delivery can be intense, but it's intense because I need to be heard. I know that people don't usually listen, as it relates to constructive criticism, without getting offended. So, I speak my mind with an attitude that I don't care if you get offended; I just want you to get the message.

We look at life from the back side of the tapestry. And most of the time, what we see is loose threads, tangled knots and the like. But occasionally, God's light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.

This union has been divided in like a civil war - brother against brother - sister against sister. And I'm pulling it together. We've already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors... What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you'd come to closed door number eight and you'd think, 'Great, I got another one out of the way'... Keep moving forward.

I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.

Social class has worked for years. Born into the right family, go to the right schools, even if you're not super bright to start with, you'll turn out bright. You go to the right university, you get the right job, you have the right connections, you'll make it to the top. Job done, very efficient.

We all live in the same house, we all must be part of the effort to hold down our little house. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just... do something about it. Say something. Have the courage. Have the backbone. Get in the way. Walk with the wind. It's all going to work out.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win - you pass the test.

When I became finance minister, they called me Okonjo-Wahala - or 'Trouble Woman.' It means 'I give you hell.' But I don't care what names they call me. I'm a fighter; I'm very focused on what I'm doing, and relentless in what I want to achieve, almost to a fault. If you get in my way, you get kicked.

I guess I just process death differently than some folks. Realizing you're not going to see that person again is always the most difficult part about it. But that feeling settles, and then you are glad you had that person in your life, and then the happiness and the sadness get all swirled up inside you.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

The film is made in the editing room. The shooting of the film is about shopping, almost. It's like going to get all the ingredients together, and you've got to make sure before you leave the store that you got all the ingredients. And then you take those ingredients and you can make a good cake - or not.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

You don't have to live up to anyone else's standards, you don't have to look like anyone else, you don't have to compare yourself to anyone else. You being you is enough, and you putting your positivity and good vibes out into the world, once you get to that point absolutely everything will fall into place.

All of the great social justice advances that we ever had in this country have come not from people with big titles and not from people at the top, but just from everyday people getting together saying 'Enough is enough. I'm going to change this, and I'm going to get involved, and I am going to be engaged.'

It's like Forrest Gump said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates.' Your career is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. But everything you get is going to teach you something along the way and make you the person you are today. That's the exciting part - it's an adventure in itself.

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it!

In my deepest, darkest moments, what really got me through was a prayer. Sometimes my prayer was 'Help me.' Sometimes a prayer was 'Thank you.' What I've discovered is that intimate connection and communication with my creator will always get me through because I know my support, my help, is just a prayer away.

Things don't always go your way in football: there are always good and bad times. At the end of the day, you have to have a positive attitude and a strong mentality and not let any setbacks get you down. And that's what I've done - I've tried to keep my composure, even when things aren't going the way I'd like.

We need to start identifying the triggers that aggravate mental health issues in our society - bullying, social media negativity and anxiety, gender based violence, substance abuse, stigma around issues such as maternal issues, etc., and we need to speak up about these more and get to the source of the problems.

Back then, as a teenager, I kept thinking, why don't the adults around here just say something? Say it so they know we don't accept segregation? I knew then and I know now that, when it comes to justice, there's no easy way to get it. You can't sugarcoat it. You have to take a stand and say, 'This is not right.'

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, 'Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn't understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn't fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn't want it to get any worse. You're the mother of my kids - I don't want to hate you.'

I understand the rules of Superman - not necessarily better than anyone else - but better than a normal filmmaker would. After doing 'Watchmen' and digging that deep into the why of superheroes, when Superman is presented to you, I felt like I was in a unique position to say 'I get this guy. I know what this is.'

There's no regret. You can't regret. I mean, I've felt regret but I've also refused to allow regret to sow a seed and live in me because I don't believe it. You feel it, it's like guilt, it's like jealousy, it's like all those horrible things. You've just got to snip them and get them out, because they're no good.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it's all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort - but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that's still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do - that's a huge piece to moving your life forward.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it's an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

We live in this era that has benefited from the Industrial Revolution, and we live with a kind of luxury and plenty that even all but the poorest of Americans live with a kind of sensuousness that was unimagined by medieval kings. But in order to get to this point, a lot of people had to suffer in really terrible ways.

When two people talk with mutual respect and listen with a real interest in understanding another point of view, when they try to put themselves in the place of another, to get inside their skin, they change the world, even if it is only by a minute amount, because they are establishing equality between two human beings.

Grief is never something you get over. You don't wake up one morning and say, 'I've conquered that; now I'm moving on.' It's something that walks beside you every day. And if you can learn how to manage it and honour the person that you miss, you can take something that is incredibly sad and have some form of positivity.

At the end of the day, having a partner in crime for life is so amazing and special, when it's real and genuine, that it's worth taking the risk. And you are going to get hurt; trust me - I know! I've been hurt a couple times - maybe more than a couple times. But you gotta pick yourself back up and give it another chance.

Whenever people ask me: 'Why didn't you get up when the bus driver asked you?' I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman's hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail.

To be a champion, I think you have to see the big picture. It's not about winning and losing; it's about every day hard work and about thriving on a challenge. It's about embracing the pain that you'll experience at the end of a race and not being afraid. I think people think too hard and get afraid of a certain challenge.

There is no better feeling than doing well while you are doing good. If you really want to meet the nicest, most caring people in your field, get involved with charity work. The thankless hours that go into planning charity dinners, running a carnival, and gathering donations for silent auctions are noticed and appreciated.

I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can't get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That's in friendship, that's a deal, that's a commitment. Don't give me paper - I can get the same lawyer who drew it up to break it. But if you shake my hand, that's for life.

We all have different things that we go through in our everyday life, and it's really important to know just at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you face, you know, that you're going to win at the end of the day. You got to believe in yourself. You got to believe in God, know that He's going to get you through it.

We get to live in a time that we get to use social media as a tool. It's not just a face on a piece of paper, and that's what makes you someone's favorite model. We can have a very similar sense of humor as someone, and that's why we're their favorite model, or our personal style, off the runway, is why we're their favorite.

The first thought that I had about really trying to get sober was, 'Man, I could do a lot of good in the world. I can lead by example and just be this heroic recovery guy.' And that's just a bad reason to get sober. You can't get sober for anybody's benefit, let alone the world at large. You really got to do it for yourself.

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think.

As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.

I am mean; I'm nasty at times. I don't feel like talking to people at times. When I am in a bad mood and have had a really awful day, don't come in my face because I am not tolerant and I am not a goddess; I can't handle it after a point. I am going to get up, and I am going to scream, and I am going to say bad things to you.

Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.

There is a saying that if you get something for free, you should know that you're the product. It was never more true than in the case of Facebook and Gmail and YouTube. You get free social-media services, and you get free funny cat videos. In exchange, you give up the most valuable asset you have, which is your personal data.

Champions are not the ones who always win races - champions are the ones who get out there and try. And try harder the next time. And even harder the next time. 'Champion' is a state of mind. They are devoted. They compete to best themselves as much if not more than they compete to best others. Champions are not just athletes.

Life flies by, and it's easy to get lost in the blur. In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, it's 'What do I want to do?' In your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the grey area - being OK with where you are.

I think that life is difficult. People have challenges. Family members get sick, people get older, you don't always get the job or the promotion that you want. You have conflicts in your life. And really, life is about your resilience and your ability to go through your life and all of the ups and downs with a positive attitude.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Share This Page