Quotes About Adversity

I remember that when I was little, my parents felt that I should study to become a teacher. They thought football was a waste of time and I'd never succeed at it.

You can't live your life blaming your failures on your parents and what they did or didn't do for you. You're dealt the cards that you're dealt. I realised it was a waste of time to be angry at my parents and feel sorry for myself.

I recently read an article on how I was dropped from a film because I couldn't dance! It was so ridiculous that I decided to shut up about it. Let people say what they want to. It's such a waste of time.

Don't waste time trying to break a man's heart; be satisfied if you can just manage to chip it in a brand new place.

Things happen every day. You can't spend your whole life trying to guard against something happening. If you do that, in my opinion, you've wasted your life.

Yes, there will be challenges, and things will blow up in your face, but learning experiences are different from wasting your life pushing a boulder up a hill.

Watch the turtle. He only moves forward by sticking his neck out.

We are already expected to be the goodie two shoes. I went through that during my junior high schools where I wasn't allowed to watch television. I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio.

I've watched the world crash and burn in every sense. I've watched the record industry crash and burn; politically I've watched it crash and burn, financially crash and burn.

I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.

I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'

In 1958, my father invested everything he had in a business venture and became the largest automobile dealership in Chicago for Ford's new Edsel line. But Edsel sales plummeted and my father fell into bankruptcy. I watched him struggle; working long hours to protect us from poverty.

When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban - that's my definition for her - I don't think she's me. Now I don't even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live.

I was a war correspondent. I've watched great people crumble under pressure and make bad decisions.

Rock bottom is a crisis... and everyone wants to avoid crisis. But what 'crisis' means literally is 'to sift' - like a child who goes to the beach, lifts up the sand, and watches all the sand fall away, hoping that there's treasure left over. That's what crisis does.

My dad never quit no matter what. He couldn't see, but he never let that stop him. Most people, when something like that happens, they just think their life is over. But that's not true. My dad can still do things like a normal person. He still cooks; he still watches my sister and my brother's baby when my mom's not home.

One of my few childhood memories is as an eight-year-old, refused permission to watch the Hitchcock season on Irish television, sneakily viewing 'The Birds' though a crack in the living-room door. It transformed my hitherto perfectly enjoyable half-mile walk to school, down a country lane patrolled by watchful birds, into a terrifying ordeal.

Man, people have been waiting for me to fall off my whole career. From the first time I stepped on the court. It probably made people sick to their stomachs watching my whole career, watching the things that I've done in my career.

I grew up watching 'Rocky.' I still love that movie, the original one.

Some fighters are better when there's no one in the crowd, and some fighters are best when they're under the gun and the whole world is watching.

You don't drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

Scalded cats fear even cold water.

That's my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck's back. If it's not positive, I didn't hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy.