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Avoid a life plan. You cannot imagine what will be invented in the future. You cannot imagine the opportunities that will be presented. A life plan will limit your future. Instead, spend your time developing a life philosophy.

Your conscience shouts, 'here's what you should do,' while your intuition whispers, 'here's what you could do.' Listen to that voice that tells you what you could do. Nothing will define your character more than that.

You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process, you will figure out who you really are — and you just might become the very best version of yourself.

When life tells you no, ask yourself honestly, 'What am I capable of?' And once you know the answer, don't be afraid to let everyone else know it too.

If you know what you're capable of, if you're always prepared, and you keep things in perspective, then life has a way of turning no into yes.

In its passivity and resignation, cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the soul. Hope is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something greater.

Construction is far more difficult because it requires the capacity to imagine something new and better, and the willingness to exert ourselves toward building it, even at the risk of failure.

You must be weak before the world, because love and listening weaken you. They make you vulnerable. They break you open.

Conversations about grass length and the weather are really conversations about how we are going to get through, and how we are going to get through together.

The life lessons that I learned at Cushing Academy, I carry with me every single day like you'd carry a cell phone, and I use them every single day like you use Instagram.

Just to be here, you guys sacrificed and left behind your family, your friends, and your social circles, and started over again from scratch. At your age, even the smallest ripple in a social circle can cause an emotional tidal wave.

I didn't know who I was or what I was going to do with my life when I finished college. I wasn't any clearer about my direction than the day I graduated high school.