We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

I am just one human being.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

My parents were dealing with evictions and repossessions and electricity getting shut off, and I just realized that I had to get it together.

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

I’m one of them guys that tries to make everything the best of the best, so sometimes I’m out of control with it.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

There’s room for role models who make mistakes.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

My head’s never really quiet. The only time I can get it to turn off is if I watch ‚CSI‘ or ‚Law & Order,‘ where I have to follow the crime. If I can’t turn my head off during that, I know I’ve really got a problem.

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

I could never give relationship advice to anybody!

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.