In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

If you were to ask me what I want to do – I don’t want to be a celebrity, I want to make a difference.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

I’m not a star. I don’t feel I’m so great. So how can I make you feel great just because you’ve got my signature on a piece of paper?

I owe my solitude to other people.

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

Rioting is a childish way of trying to be a man, but it takes time to rise out of the hell of hatred and frustration and accept that to be a man you don’t have to riot.

Sometimes you have the trends that’s not that cool. You may have certain artists portraying these trends and don’t really have that lifestyle, and then it gives off the wrong thing. And it becomes kinda corny after awhile. It’s really about keeping hip-hop original and pushing away the corniness in it.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

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

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

Learn to say ‚no‘ to the good so you can say ‚yes‘ to the best.

Be as you wish to seem.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

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

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

I think I’m like most people – we fear the unknown and the things that have yet to come to pass, which are the very things that don’t deserve to be feared. When you give God complete control, it’s very hard not to be fearless.