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

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.

Where the mind goes, the man follows.

We spend so much time sublimatin‘, thinkin‘ about, ‚What am I going to have for lunch, dinner?‘

I shall never be a heretic; I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally; on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men.

People are just afraid of things too much. Afraid of things that don’t necessarily merit fear.

It’s getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work… I’m trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

I bought a gun and chose drugs instead.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

I’m addicted to placebos.

The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we’ve forgotten there’s any other way.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

I am fearful, or suspicious, of generalizations… They cannot guide me reliably in making decisions about particular individuals.

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

The day-to-day making of policy is arguing all the time. You’re trying to get the right approach and the right answer, and there are moments that aren’t very pleasant. But in the end, you look at the overall product.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

I think Clinton, after getting into office and into Washington, was shocked at being bludgeoned. So he spent time trying to be all things to all people – one way guaranteed not to be successful or respected in a lion’s den. You can’t just play around with all those big cats – you’ve got to take somebody on.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

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

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

As president, you can get all kinds of advice from all kinds of people. But at the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values and your vision and the life experiences that make you who you are.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.