It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn’t have parents.

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what’s around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody’s interested in somebody who’s just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing – there is no latest thing. It’s all rubbish.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

There is something in the way that we are now, with our cell phones, and people are not looking at each other and not being in the moment with each other, that kids feel isolated.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

I sometimes ask people, ‚Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?‘ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

If you look at the movie ‚Belly,‘ I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I’m not in the game for the wrong reasons. I’m not in the game for the glory. I’m in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I’m a highly intelligent individual.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

Man, wear your seat belts. That’s all I can tell everybody. You never know.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

Since the civil war in Laos was resumed in earnest in 1963, American participation has been veiled in secrecy.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Part of the population of Laos lives in urban centers, Vientiane being the largest.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

I feel like the thing we can do is celebrate people doing great work and create more cultural momentum and awareness that this is an important thing in the world. So when the next economic crisis hits and people are talking about where to cut from the budget, science isn’t the thing.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.

In much of the world, there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

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