It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

Now I realize that from ’72 through to about ’76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn’t have been more rock star.

In a universe that’s an intelligent system with a divine creative force supporting it, there simply can be no accidents. As tough as it is to acknowledge, you had to go through what you went through in order to get to where you are today, and the evidence is that you did.

I don’t really know that much about love, it turns out.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

I’m not a regrets-type person.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

Egos are never nice. I have been a victim of it a lot of times in my career. Whenever I have used it, I have failed.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

People – especially white people – they want me to be a role model just because of the life I lead. The things I say in my songs, they expect it of me.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

I got my own back.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.

I was married a few times, and one of my husbands was jealous of me writing.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

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

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

For my career, I wouldn’t go racing if I didn’t enjoy it. I still need to have my say, and not just get put with a team and get told to deal with it.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.