To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

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

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

My life is my argument.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

I am absolutely my own biggest critic.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

I listen to my old records and I think, ‚How did I ever get on the radio?‘

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‚I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.‘

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

I like to make people feel happy and superior in their reaction towards my appearance.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.

I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Once you begin to fall off the track and believe you breathe different air to everyone else, you’re doomed; you’re finished.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

The only shame is to have none.

I feel that sin and evil are the negative part of you, and I think it’s like a battery: you’ve got to have the negative and the positive in order to be a complete person.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

People always say that you can’t please everybody. I think that’s a cop-out. Why not attempt it? ‚Cause think of all the people you will please if you try.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Education must provide the opportunities for self-fulfillment; it can at best provide a rich and challenging environment for the individual to explore, in his own way.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.