No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud’s own writing.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate.

Many people listen to what I have to say and I appear a lot in media, so therefore I influence a lot of people and therefore I have a bigger responsibility because I have a bigger platform.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

Madonna, I think, is the greatest visual musical artist that we’ve ever had. If you look at her photo log, the photographers that she was able to work with throughout her career framed her in the proper way. It was the proper context. It was that visual that made sure that everything was gonna cut through in a certain way.

Fear is a spirit that produces a feeling.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

Being acknowledged for your work is always a great accomplishment, whether it’s people in my city, kids in the street, all the way up to the Grammys.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

I believe in that old adage that ‚as goes California, so goes the country.‘

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ’60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.

Masses are always breeding grounds of psychic epidemics.

Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.

Reviews condition people. At the end of the day, a lot of human minds are malleable. They can be easily shaped with strong words.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.

What I’d really like to control is not machines, but people.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

All emotion is involuntary when genuine.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

In Hawaii, some of the biggest radio stations are reggae. The local bands are heavily influenced by Bob Marley.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.

Not brute force but only persuasion and faith are the kings of this world.

The personal ego already has a strong element of dysfunction, but the collective ego is, frequently, even more dysfunctional, to the point of absolute insanity.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

People have different emotional levels. Especially when you’re young.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

It’s not just human nature to associate in tribes. It’s deeper than that.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

There were some great clinicians in the 20th century – great men. Freud was a genius; Jung was a genius, Carl Rogers was a genius – there’s a half-dozen psychologists of the 1950s and humanists of the 1960s.

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.