When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

Dogs never bite me – just humans.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

A gentleman is never rude except on purpose – I can honestly be nasty sober, believe you me.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Meditation helps me to calm down.

So much of what we do every single day is the result of habits that we have formed over time.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.

If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane, If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane, If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.

There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it’s your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can’t package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

‚Fame‘ exhausts me.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

If you’re treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they’re real for you whether they’re real or not.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

When I was 11 I became very depressed. It had a lot to do with the climate and ecological crisis. I thought everything was just so wrong and nothing was happening and there’s no point in anything.

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

Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.

I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.

You’ve gotta be very careful that grace and politeness do not merge into a banality of behavior, where we’re just nice, sort of ‚death by cupcake.‘

When I get down, I don’t waller around for long.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

Extremely religious, legalistic people have a criticism or judgment about everyone and everything. They just have a way of bringing people down with what they say.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

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

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

I can analyze people’s intentions. Immediately. That’s just a warning. To everyone.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

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.

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.

As a shame researcher, I know that the very best thing to do in the midst of a shame attack is totally counterintuitive: Practice courage and reach out!

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.