There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best in the world, as long as you know that doing so also means wanting to be the best for the world.

The goal was never to beat the competition, or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.

Every experience, no matter how bad it seems, holds within it a blessing of some kind. The goal is to find it.

To show man the best that is in him; not the most appealing or the most amusing or even the most realistic - but the best, which is rare and common and understood by all of us in all our different ways ... to include all the others - the meanest, the cheapest, the most cowardly - as a background and a foreground for something better ... to dig in the old scum that covers us all and find something that might be a tool for a man who would use it to fashion his self-respect in a world where all those tools are buried or broken or illegal ... and finally to tell it as it is, trying to see it all and especially the best, for to miss that part is to shovel shit on men who were born in quicksand and find no novelty in the heave and smell of doom.

If you want the best the world has to offer, offer the world your best.

Aim to live a wild, generous, full, exciting life — blessing those around you and seeing the good in all.

Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.

Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.

After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and
when I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them; I determined at last to inquire whether
there was anything which might be truly good, and able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the exclusion of all other things; I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and attain the
faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness..
I could see the many advantages acquired from honor and riches, and that I should be debarred from acquiring these things if I wished seriously to investigate a new matter…But the more one possesses of either of them, the more the pleasure is increased, and the more one is in con-
sequence encouraged to increase them; whereas if at any time our hope is frustrated, there arises in us the deepest pain. Fame has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it we
must direct our lives in such a way as to please the fancy of men, avoiding what they dislike and seeking what pleases
them. . .. But the love towards a thing eternal and infinite alone feeds the mind with a pleasure secure from all pain… The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the
mind has with the whole of nature….The more the mind knows, the better it understands its forces and the order of
nature; the more it understands its forces or strength, the better it will be able to direct itself and lay down the rules for itself; and the more it understands the order of nature,
the more easily it will be able to liberate itself from useless things; this is the whole method.

The point of life was to press on, to do the best you can, to make the world a better place.

We cannot live better than in seeking to become better.

Remember, our goal is not to ignore the problems of life, but to put ourselves in better mental and emotional states where we can not only come up with solutions, but act upon them.

I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge - I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world

Your ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply to be what is generally called “a success.