The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

In order to heal others, we first need to heal ourselves. And to heal ourselves, we need to know how to deal with ourselves.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

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

I still consider it a summer job, though. So, I try to maintain that summer job as long as I can. But it’s exciting to be able to have the opportunity to do things I always dreamed of as a kid.

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.

I have trust issues with allowing other individuals to know my innermost secrets for fear of how I may be viewed. Everyone has this.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

Who I am on stage is very, very different to who I am in real life.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.

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

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I wanted to become an illustrator as a child.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

I’m an all-or-nothing kind of guy, I guess.

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 greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

I always entertain great hopes.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

I don’t want to be an action star, an action star’s life is so short. I want my life to get longer, I want my career to get longer.

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

I have always had a talent for irritating women since I was fourteen.

If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

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

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down – oh my God, it’s a casket. Just freaky stuff like that.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.

Ever since I dated a woman, I know what it is to grab a curve on a woman’s body. Skinny’s not fine when the lights are low.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.