When people go to a track meet, they're looking for something, a world record, something that hasn't been done before. You get all this magnetic energy, people focusing on one thing at the same time. I really get excited about it. It makes me want to compete even more. It makes it all worthwhile, all the hours of hard work.

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Efficiency is a great secret that can drop us right into our ideal life path, but it is a hard one to practice and something that takes constant maintenance and work.

If you want something, work hard for it, go after it. I can't worry about all the 'no's, because I believe there's a yes, and I've been very fortunate to find those in my career and made the most of those opportunities.

I work on the motto that if something's not impossible, there must be a way to do it.

Confidence doesn't come out of nowhere. It's a result of something... hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

A lot of people mistake habit for hard work. Doing something over and over again is not working hard.

Being an astronaut is a wonderful career. I feel very privileged. But what I really hope for young people is that they find a career they're passionate about, something that's challenging and worthwhile.

The harder you work... and visualize something, the luckier you get.

Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else.

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

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.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work - and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.

The Relation we bear to the Wisdom of the Father, the Son of His Love, gives us indeed a dignity which otherwise we have no pretence to. It makes us something, something considerable even in God's Eyes.

After the knowledge of, and obedience to, the will of God, the next aim must be to know something of His attributes of wisdom, power, and goodness as evidenced by His handiwork.

Instead of looking at life as a narrowing funnel, we can see it ever widening to choose the things we want to do, to take the wisdom we've learned and create something.

Being a survivor doesn't mean being strong - it's telling people when you need a meal or a ride, company, whatever. It's paying attention to heart wisdom, feelings, not living a role, but having a unique, authentic life, having something to contribute, finding time to love and laugh. All these things are qualities of survivors.

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.

Today, education does not give you the wisdom and the understanding; it only indoctrinates you to believe something. So the mind knows very less but accepts so many things; it may be science, it may be technology, it may be anything.

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

Everything important always begins from something trivial.