Gamble, cheat, lie, and steal. Let me explain: Gamble for your best shot in life - dare to take risks. Cheat those who would have you be less than you are. Lie in the arms of those you love. And finally, steal every moment of happiness.

Trans people deserve something vital; they deserve your respect. From that respect comes a more compassionate community.

In the fifth grade I discovered something I could do better than the other kids. One day, the teacher set up a bunch of chairs, and she had everyone run to the chairs and back while she timed us. I had the fastest time in the whole school!

The Montreal Olympics were in July 1976, the bicentennial, at the height of patriotism.

Life wasn't easy growing up; it was frustrating. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily, everything would have come easily, and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

My greatest gift in life was being dyslexic. It made me special. It made me different. If I had not been dyslexic, I wouldn't have needed sports.

If I wasn't dyslexic, I probably wouldn't have won the Games. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily... and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.

I got into sports because that was a way to prove your masculinity. I was good at it.

If I had not been dyslexic, I wouldn't have needed sports. I would have been like every other kid. Instead, I found my one thing, and I was never going to let go of it. That little dyslexic kid is always in the back of your head.

Sports saved my life.

I'm just going to go live life. I'm going to go enjoy life. I have nothing left to hide. I am kind of a free person, a free soul.

A good laugh is sunshine in the house.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

When I walk with you I feel as if I had a flower in my buttonhole.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

There is no such thing as the pursuit of happiness, but there is the discovery of joy.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

Religion is the search for ultimate meaning.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Happiness is neither without us nor within us. It is in God, both without us and within us.

Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.