Arnold Schwarzenegger's Best Quotes on Strength and Success
Arnold Schwarzenegger has had a career that most could only dream of, from champion bodybuilder to legendary action star to elected public official. And at 75, Schwarzenegger is showing no signs of slowing down. In our October 2019 cover story, Schwarzenegger opened up about his long career, his thoughts on America, and more.
Schwarzenegger dropped a bunch of memorable gems during his talk with Men's Health, so we compiled a list of the legend's best quotes of all time on strength, success, and family.
On America
"When I travel around the world, the most common thing that people always come to me about—and I’m a very accessible kind of guy, right?—people come up to me in the gym or at a restaurant and say, 'America.' America," he told Men's Health in 2019. "People everywhere, no matter how much they dump on America, no matter how much people laugh at Trump right now all over the world—they want to come to America. Because they know that one president, one man, cannot change this country."
On What He Would Tell His Younger Self
"There’s a saying in German: Selbsterkenntnis ist der beste Weg zur Besserung, which means 'Self-knowledge is the best way to improve.' I believe in that. When you fail, the trick is to get up again and evaluate in an honest way what went wrong," Schwarzenegger explained to Men's Health in 2018.
He continued, "Each one of the things I made a mistake in, I eventually learned from that, and it made me a better person. It made me more experienced. It made me wiser."
On Hard Work
"One of my six principles of success is work your ass off. There is no shortcut," Schwarzenegger told Men's Health in 2017. "If you think there is, you’re wrong. Everything I’ve ever accomplished in my life was because I worked my butt off, not because I found some shortcut."
On His Rivalry with Sylvester Stallone
In 2017, Schwarzenegger explained the origin of his legendary feud with Stallone during a Q&A session. "We were attacking each other in the press relentlessly. We called each other names and called out our weak points, and it was so competitive. It became so silly that all of a sudden it became a competition about who has the most muscular body, who has the most unique killing, who makes more money at the box office. It was unbelievable.
The actors later patched things up, to the point where Schwarzenegger refused to another Expendables movie without Stallone. "There is no Expendables without Sly," the former governor said. "I would never do the movie without him, no."
On Trusting Yourself
"So many young people are getting so much advice from their parents and from their teachers and from everyone. But what is most important is that you have to dig deep down, dig deep down and ask yourselves, who do you want to be? Not what, but who," the actor said during his commencement address at USC in 2009. "And I’m talking about not what your parents and teachers want you to be, but you. I’m talking about figuring out for yourselves what makes you happy, no matter how crazy it may sound to other people."
On How to Diet
"Every time I did a movie when I needed to be ripped, I just cut out the bread and the dessert and I got ripped...In Austria we always just ate the egg. Why do you want to separate the egg [yolk]? It doesn’t make any sense," he hilariously told The Financial Times in 2019.
On Being a Champion
"The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion," Schwarzenegger once said.
On the Idea of Perfection
"I always felt like my body wasn’t there and I was critical and that’s makes you hungry and puts fire in your belly to make you perform; to do more. That’s good when people feel like that," he explained in 2017. "What is not helpful is if you stand there in front of the mirror and you say, 'I see perfection.' Because then it’s over. You will not be motivated to go and do the work anymore."
On Fatherhood
"Kids are the next best thing after cloning—even though you realize every child has a different personality. If you really want to spread your philosophy, whether it’s about giving back, fighting for fitness, or, just like my dad told me, making the world a better place than you inherited, you’d better do a good job as a parent," the actor said in 2018.
On His Work Ethic
"I see guys I meet in the gym that are from Austria. They’re aggressive. They’re from Israel, they’re from France, they’re from Germany, from Russia, from all kinds of different places," he told Men's Health in 2019. "And they find their way, because what happens when you’re a foreigner is, you have the work ethic. You know that you have to struggle from the beginning; otherwise you wouldn’t be leaving your country. If you had this wonderful, rosy atmosphere, you would not want to leave."
On Working With Others
Schwarzenegger told Men's Health about the unlikely trait that he shares with Trump: "I always complain about Trump not being able to shift from Trump to president. Well, the reason why I say this is because I saw that with myself, that I was not able to shift from Arnold to governor. I was still stuck as Arnold. Arnold always gets things done. I forced my way in there, then I do it and do it and do it and do it, until it gets done.
And I felt the same thing I can do with politics. But I learned quickly that that’s really not the way it works. You got to be able to bring people together. It takes much more time, much more effort, but that’s just the way it is. If you don’t like that, don’t get into politics."
On Changing the World
"It [reformed health care and environmental change] will not happen if people just sit around and complain when they hear something on the news," Schwarzenegger said in 2018. "I’m a big advocate of 'get off your fucking couch and do something about it.' If you believe there’s something being done wrong by legislators, go out and do everything you can to unseat that person."
"The same if you see a president acting strange: Do everything you can to unseat that president. My father said to me, 'Be useful.' Useful not only to yourself, but useful to your neighborhood, your country, the world. It entails everything."
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