When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn’t bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn’t have any brains. I didn’t know what I was doing there. That’s why I became an actor.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

My justification is that most people my age spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re going to do for the next five or ten years. The time they spend thinking about their life, I just spend drinking.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

If you’ve ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you’ll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.

I have a brother and sister; my mother does not care for thought, and father, too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

If you’re going to spend two years of your life on something, it has to matter to you; you have to be passionate about it.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

I have learned to know God. I have recast my social belief… All my admirers are married; most of my friends are dead; and I stand with all the world before me, where to choose a path to make in it.

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

I believe that having a spiritual life is so important in everybody’s life.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old with grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible for all who will set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

One might say that our words are a movie screen that reveals what we have been thinking and the attitudes we have.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

I grew up in a funny way.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.

The most challenging project I’ve ever done, I think, is every single thing I’ve ever tried to do. It’s never easy.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

You can’t put your feet on the ground until you’ve touched the sky.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

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

I’ve always put everybody else’s child first before my own health, before my own outfit, before my own time frame.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

One of my goals from really early on was that if I was ever fortunate enough to be successful in music, I would want to stay the same person and the same songwriter.

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

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.