I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

I have always believed in evolving a consensus before taking any major decision.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

There is so much that people take for granted.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

Finality is not the language of politics.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Go up in an airplane. Go high enough, and it’s like we don’t even exist.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds, and I very rarely change it.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you’re already accepted, and you’re not really concerned about offending people.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

I am not some goddess that dropped down from the sky to sing pop music; I am not some extra-incredible human person that needs to be told how wonderful they are all day and kissed.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

If the critics are right that I’ve made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

I really don’t pay attention to the outside world when I’m incarcerated, because being in prison is like being in a different world. So I don’t pay attention to what’s going on outside of jail, because it’s all beyond my control.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.