Quotes from Arnold Schwarzenegger

The mind always fails first, not the body. The secret is to make your mind work for you, not against you.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths.

If a guy looked at me in a weird way or challenged me for whatever reason, I'd be in his face. I'd give him the shock treatment: I'd rip off my shirt to reveal my tank top underneath and then I'd punch him out. Or sometimes when he saw me he'd just say, "Oh, what the hell. Why don't we just get a beer?

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.

I taught myself discipline, the strictest kind of discipline. How to be totally in control of my body, how to control each individual muscle. I could apply that discipline to everyday life. I used it in acting, in going to school. Whenever I didn't want to study I would just think back and remember what it took to be Mr. Universe—the sacrifice, the hard work—and I would plunge myself into studying.

You can overthink anything. There are always negatives. The more you know, the less you tend to do something. 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.

We realized that if you wanted a girl, you had to make an effort to have a conversation, not just drool like a horny dog. You had to establish a comfort level.

Not every legend is a myth, some are flesh and blood. Some legends walk among us, but they aren't born, they're built. Legends are made from iron & sweat, mind and muscle, blood and vision and victory. Legends are champions, they grow, they win, they conquer.

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Vision creates faith and faith creates willpower. With faith there is no anxiety, no doubt—just absolute confidence.

simple rule: Breathe out with effort. For example, if you are doing a Squat, take in a breath as you stand with the weight on your shoulders and squat down, and expel your breath as you push yourself back up. As you breathe out, don't hold your breath.

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.

It wasn't that I disliked the army. In fact, it was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. Being a soldier had done a lot for my self-confidence. Once I was living independently from my family, I found out I could depend on myself. I learned to make comrades of strangers and be a comrade in return. The structure and discipline seemed more natural than at home. If I carried out orders, I felt I'd accomplished something.

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.

After that, 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 fucking way, I'm on a mission. So just step aside and gimme the trophy.

Though you may not realize it now, you'll eventually recognize it when you take the same disciplined approach in tackling a particular challenge.

have never seen a case in which an individual made progress in bodybuilding without experiencing an accompanying boost in self-esteem, self-confidence, and enjoyment of life.

Concentrate on being useful, rather than how do I feel today, otherwise the world is not going to change.

I told my friends that my worst nightmare would be to feel somebody shaking me and hear my mother's voice say, "Arnold, you overslept! You have to get up! You're going to be two hours late for work. Hurry! You have to get to the factory!" And I'd be saying, "Noooo! Why did you wake me up? I was having the most incredible dream. I want to see how it turns out.

Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women.

We realized that if you wanted a girl, you had to make an effort to have a conversation, not just drool like a horny dog.

Sports are so physical that it's easy to overlook the mind's power, but I've seen it demonstrated again and again.

The more you do it, the more automatic it becomes, and the less effort it takes.

Often it's easier to make a decision when you don't know as much, because then you can't overthink. If you know too much, it can freeze you. The whole deal looks like a minefield.