I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

Night brings our troubles to the light, rather than banishes them.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

I think I have always had a little humor.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.

I just want to be myself.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

I’m not going to limit myself just because people won’t accept the fact that I can do something else.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

I don’t mind people hating me, because it pushes me.

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

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.

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

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

The older you get, the better you get.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

I’m a big believer in doing things that make you uncomfortable. So, we live in a world where we want to be as comfortable as we can. And we wonder why we have no growth. We wonder why – when the smallest thing in our life gets difficult – we wonder why we cower and we run away.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I’ve never been shy or secretive with the fact that if you walk into my life, you may be walking onto a record.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, ‚I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,‘ and I actually meant it.

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.

I guess I have a little bit of an ego. I’m confidently cocky, you might say.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

No matter what, people grow. If you chose not to grow, you’re staying in a small box with a small mindset. People who win go outside of that box. It’s very simple when you look at it.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

I like pushing boundaries.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

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

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.