Chris Gardner Quotes

The future was uncertain, absolutely, and there were many hurdles, twists, and turns to come, but as long as I kept moving forward, one foot in front of the other, the voices of fear and shame, the messages from those who wanted me to believe that I wasn't good enough, would be stilled.

The world is your oyster. It's up to you to find the pearls.

Walk that walk and go forward all the time. Don't just talk that talk, walk it and go forward. Also, the walk didn't have to be long strides; baby steps counted too. Go forward.

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?

Others may question your credentials, your papers, your degrees. Others may look for all kinds of ways to diminish your worth. But what is inside you no one can take from you or tarnish. This is your worth, who you really are, your degree that can go with you wherever you go, that you bring with you the moment you come into a room, that can't be manipulated or shaken. Without that sense of self, no amount of paper, no pedigree, and no credentials can make you legit. No matter what, you have to feel legit inside first.

Wealth can also be that attitude of gratitude with which we remind ourselves everyday to count our blessings.

Still a dreamer, yet more of a realist than ever before, I knew this was my time to sail. On the horizon I saw the shining future, as before. The difference now was that I felt the wind at my back. I was ready.

Her stillness defeated his storm.

There was a language specific to all things. The ability to learn another language in one arena, whether it was music, medicine, or finance, could be used to accelerate learning and other arenas, too.

But if you don’t take the necessary steps to make them happen, dreams are just mirages that mess with your head!

No one ever laid out the sequence of events that led to my mother being prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged welfare fraud.

Sizing up succinctly his lack of formal education compared with his determination to learn from others, the author writes, "I went to college with every person I ever met.

Then again, what seems like nothing in the eyes of the world, when properly valued and put to use, can be among the greatest riches.

sometimes the only way we can discover our true power is by living through the crisis we feared. As

This is a work of nonfiction. I have rendered the events faithfully and truthfully just as I have recalled them. Some names and descriptions of individuals have been changed in order to respect their privacy. To anyone whose name I did not

It's okay to fail, it's not okay to quit.

Every time he came back, apologetic, contrite, he'd start off being real nice. But he was as predictable as rain. No body knew when he'd go off, but at some point everybody knew he would.

If you have a dream and a desire to pursue it with every fiber of your being, but can’t move past excuses or circumstances that seem to be standing in your way, there is a life lesson ahead with your name on it. If you are tired of the status quo and are dying to shake up your life, reinvent yourself, and find a pursuit you love doing so much that you can’t wait for the sun to come up in the morning, you’ve come to the right place. If

Don’t listen to them,” I said. “In fact, don’t ever let anybody tell you that you can’t do something. Not your parents, your teachers. Nobody.

Others may question your credentials, your papers, your degrees. Others may look for all kinds of ways to diminish your worth. But what is inside you no one can take from you or tarnish. This is your worth, who you really are, your degree that can go with you wherever you go, that you bring with you the moment you come into a room, that can't be manipulated or shaken. Without that sense of self, no amount of paper, no pedigree, and no credentials can make you legit. No matter what, you have to feel legit inside first.” ― Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

Mr. Gardner, why people gotta keep you down when you have your dream?” Again, I was having a long overdue conversation with myself. “Well,” I said, “people who can’t do something themselves, they’re jealous, so they wanna tell you that you can’t do it. But you know what? You got a dream, it’s yours and you gotta protect it. So, don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. If you want something, go get it. Period.

we all have the power of choice in determining who we ultimately become. This

You won’t find magic potions here. No matter how enticing they may seem, promises of quick fixes mostly set us up for failure and do more to deter us than empower us.

Cualquiera que crea que el dinero lo salva todo, no ha tenido nunca dinero… como yo en aquel tiempo.

The irony is that while sleep sometimes brings nightmares, it’s the reality of my waking hours that can cause me the greater fear.

no matter where you are, only you have dominion over your mind, your beliefs, and your attitudes. So if you look at your situation and let go of excuses or blame, and you choose to believe that you can alter your position on your own, you’ll deprive the system, the man, or the ism controlling you. First,

What I do know in the hours and days that follow is that nothing puts more stress on a relationship between a man and a woman than if the man has no job. At least, in the world I come from and inhabit, that’s so. A man without a job, as far as my upbringing taught me, is no man at all. Any man that was a man had to take care of and provide for his family.

All that travel is inevitably exhausting, but it never gets old. Arriving in the next city for the next opportunity is always a thrill. As busy as I am, wherever I am, I try to get out and walk the streets, to check out the sidewalks for cracks, to remember how far I’ve come and appreciate every baby step of the way, to stand in amazement and joy that the pursuit never ends.

Now I know a lot of us would rather skip over whatever happened back in the day, because it’s painful or obsolete (as some would say), because there’s nothing to do to change it, other than to let it go or get over it. But if we do that, we risk losing our knowledge of what really makes us happy: the pure essence of joy that we knew as children. And if we don’t take the time to reclaim the dreams that we may have left back there in the thorny and golden past, we will be poorer for it.

until you are at home in yourself, familiar with the knowledge of the gold of who you are, where you come from, where you’ve been, and who you were meant to be, you’ll be basically “homeless.” In other words, until you can come to value all experience, and find some happyness in everything you’ve lived and will live, you will be without your ultimate riches.

if anybody asks you who you are, tell them you are a child of God.” That message translated in such a way that you would never call yourself a slave or tell anyone that you were a child of slaves or that you belonged to a slave owner. As a child of God, you were not a mistake, or a product of lust or rape, but you were meant to be here, to learn, love, and be loved.

As children, very few of us have the capacity to fend off demeaning, negating comments, even the ones that are made without malice. Our work as adults is to make the choice to not pass those words on to our kids and to reject cruel or unthinking remarks about ourselves—to flick ’em off our shoulders like dandruff!

Only by acknowledging, “Hey, here is where I am, and I’m here because I steered my horse here,” can I make the next choice to ride on out to the sunset where I’d really like to be. Or,

If you want something, go get it. Period!" -Chris Gardner (portrayed by Will Smith) in 'The Pursuit of Happyness.

«Más dinero, más problemas».

It’s okay to fail, it’s not okay to quit.

It was a multi-step process that involved first contacting the number-two person in the management hierarchy and offering some special investment opportunities and then, when there wasn’t interest right away, tracking in real dollars what they had turned down. Three months later I would place a call to the number-one person at the company and note that I had called before, saying, "I would have been calling you to send you a check for one hundred thousand dollars, but you didn’t feel that it was of interest at the time. Here’s what I’m calling you about now..." Almost across the board immediate interest and some subsequent trading followed.

I used to think that I knew something about poverty. You have not seen poverty until you’ve seen it in Africa.