I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

It’s flattering to people who stop you and say that you’ve helped them and all. But, again, you know, you’ve got to stay humble because as quick as you came up, you can come down.

Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don’t know at all can just be like, ‚Oh my God – are you Billie?‘

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

When people are lame, they love to blame.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.

I’m not the most patient of people.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

We are so very ‚umble.

I admire people who destroy themselves.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

That’s all I could ever hope for, to have a positive effect on women. ‚Cos women are powerful, powerful beings. But they’re also the most doubtful beings. They’ll never know – we’ll never know – how powerful we are.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

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

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

The game is changing with songs like ‚Earned It‘ as opposed to it changing me.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

I’m no genius.

There was my name up in lights. I said, ‚God, somebody’s made a mistake.‘ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‚Remember, you’re not a star.‘ Yet there it was up in lights.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas and focusing on the essentials.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.