“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” 

“I'm inspired by the people I meet in my travels--hearing their stories, seeing the hardships they overcome, their fundamental optimism and decency. I'm inspired by the love people have for their children. And I'm inspired by my own children, how full they make my heart. They make me want to work to make the world a little bit better. And they make me want to be a better man.” 

“If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.” 

“If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper - that makes this country work.” 

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.

Try not to become a man of success, but a man of value. Look around at how people want to get more out of life than they put in. A man of value will give more than he receives. Be creative, but make sure that what you create is not a curse for mankind. 

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

Success is my only option, failure’s not.

My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general; if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.

"There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can"

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

There are no gains without pains. 

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Nothing succeeds like success.

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

"Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open."

"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."

"Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation."

"America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men."

"My knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands."

"I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man's private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious... I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics."

"In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length."

"I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says."

"The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world."

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."

"What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it."

"A man's own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself."

"It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician - but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is - so that I have an advantage there."

"It is not, of course, complete yet - but some sentences were understood this afternoon... I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem - and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas - and friends converse with each other without leaving home."

"Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids."

"The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion."

"I have discovered that my interest in my dear pupil, Mabel, has ripened into a far deeper feeling than that of mere friendship. In fact, I know that I have learned to love her very sincerely."

"From my earliest childhood, my attention was specially directed to the subject of acoustics, and specially to the subject of speech, and I was urged by my father to study everything relating to these subjects, as they would have an important bearing upon what was to be my professional work."

"Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem."

"Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don't intend to give in either till all is completed."

"It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say 'oral method' to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say 'sign language' to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment."

"The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking."

"Dumbness comes from the fact that a child is born deaf and that it consequently never learns how to articulate, for it is by the medium of hearing that such instruction is acquired."

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

"Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods."

"The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action."

"The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another."

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus"

"Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when one gives his or her order to produce a definite result and stands by that order, it seems to have the effect of giving one what might be termed a second sight which enables him or her to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when one is in that state of mind in which he or she knows exactly what one wants and is fully determined not to quit until he or she finds it."

"The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization."