I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

I set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‚Why god? Why me?‘ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‚There’s just something about you that pisses me off.‘

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

If you don’t know your full-throttle history, the whole story of how you came to where you are, it’s kind of hard to put things together.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

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.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

I feel Anglo-American.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

Your life will be a blessed and balanced experience if you first honor your identity and priority.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

I was becoming post-ideological.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

God has entrusted me with myself.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

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.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

He that waits upon fortune, is never sure of a dinner.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

This has always been my life and no one else’s, and that’s how it’s always been since the day I came in it.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.