We live in an imperfect world, and imperfect people surround us every day.

I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone’s imagination.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.

Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.

No rapper in the world from Jay-Z to Tupac to Biggie has 100 percent love on everything they do.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can’t do anything with that except do it.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Even paranoids have real enemies.

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

The present condition of fame is merely fashion.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

I can tell you all kinds of moral tales, but fashion and reality are vaguely different.

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.