Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes

“Build a house, and your investment returns value. Buy a couch, and the minute you take it out of the furniture store, it loses value. That's why I always say a house, you invest in; furniture, you spend money on.”

“But no matter what you do in life, selling is a part of it.”

“Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.”

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.”

“Everything has style, everything's a little bit larger than life and done with mischief.”

“Forget plan B. To test yourself and grow, you have to operate without a safety net.”

“From the bodybuilding days on, I learned
that everything is reps and mileage. The more miles you ski, the better a skier you become; the more reps you do, the better your body.”

“Have a vision, trust yourself, break some rules, ignore the naysayers, don’t be afraid to fail.”

“I aimed to be a leader someday, but I knew it was important to learn obedience as well.”

“I always believed in shooting for the top, and to become an American is like becoming a member of the winning team.”

“I didn't mind basic training. It taught me that something that seems impossible at the start can be achieved.”

“I love it when people say that something can’t be done. That’s when I really get motivated; I like to prove them wrong.”

“I never argued with people who underestimated me. If the accent and the muscles and the movies made people think I was stupid, it worked to my advantage.”

“I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. My father let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.”

“I never went to a competition to compete. I went to win. Even though I didn’t win every time, that was my mind-set. I became a total animal. If you tuned into my thoughts before a competition, you would hear something like: “I deserve that pedestal, I own it, and the sea ought to part for me. Just get out of the f*cking way, I’m on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.”

“I realized that writing something is different from saying it.”

“I was striving to be the most muscular man, and it got me into the movies. It got me everything that I have.”

“I was very glad I could afford to say no. With the income from my businesses, I didn’t need money from acting. I never wanted to be in a financially vulnerable position, where I had to take a part I didn’t like.”

“I’d closed my ears to my friends’ horror stories about married life. “Ha! Now you get to argue about who should change the diapers.” Or “What kind of food makes a woman stop giving blow jobs? Wedding cake!” Or “Oh boy, wait until she hits menopause.” I paid no attention to any of that. “Just let me stumble into it,” I told them. “I don’t want to be forewarned.”

“I’m a big believer in hard work, grinding it out, and not stopping until it’s done.”

“If I can see it and believe it, then I can achieve it.”

“If I had known everything about real estate, movies, and bodybuilding, I wouldn’t have gone into them. I felt the same about marriage; I might not have done it if I’d known everything I’d have to go through. The hell with that! I knew Maria was the best woman for me, and that’s all that counted.”

“If my life was a movie, no one would believe it.”

“If you don’t believe in yourself, then how will anyone else believe in you?”

“If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream.”

“In weeks that followed, I refined this vision until it was very specific. I was going to go for the Mr. Universe title; I was going to break records in power lifting; I was going to Hollywood; I was going to be like Reg Park. The vision became so clear in my mind that I felt like it had to happen. There was no alternative; it was this or nothing. My mother noticed right away that something was different. I was coming home with a big smile. I told her that I was training, and she could see I found joy in becoming stronger.”

“It always seemed to me that the biggest obstacle to successful training is that the body adjusts so quickly. Do the same sequence of lifts every day, and even if you keep adding weight, you’ll see your muscle growth slow and then stop; the muscles become very efficient at performing the sequence they expect. The way to wake up the muscle and make it grow again is to jolt it with the message “You will never know what’s coming. It will always be different from what you expect. Today it’s this, tomorrow it’s something else.” One day it’s ultra-heavy weights; the next day high reps.”

“It might seem like I was handcuffing myself by setting such specific goals, but it was actually just the opposite: I found it liberating. Knowing exactly where I wanted to end up freed me totally to improvise how to get there.”

“It turns out that the governor of California has more authority to name appointees than any elected official in America except the president of the United States and the mayor of Chicago.”

“It’s human nature to work on the things that we are good at. If you have big biceps, you want to do an endless number of curls because it’s so satisfying to see this major bicep flex. To be successful, however, you must be brutal with yourself and focus on the flaws.”