The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

I don’t want to say anything negative about anybody or anything or anybody’s political beliefs. I’ve never done that. I’ve never tried to get involved in those things.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It’s one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly, even if they roll a few stones upon it.

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

I am so tired of fear. And I don’t want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one’s own town.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

It isn’t necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

You know, God will give favor to anyone who will believe Him. Every day you should confess that you have favor everywhere you go. God will begin to open doors that you wouldn’t believe.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.

Look at the world. There is no pure competitor to the United States of America.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Music has the power to inspire the world.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

While there’s life, there’s hope.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

Little things affect little minds.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

I just think people should invest in the world. Don’t invest in fashion, but invest in the world.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

Fear is stupid. So are regrets.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

If you can dream it, you can do it.