Our Creator expects His children everywhere to educate themselves.

The moment the alarm goes off is the first test; it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win – you pass the test.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it’s up to me to choose to develop them.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

We need enlightenment, not just individually but collectively, to save the planet. We need to awaken ourselves. We need to practice mindfulness if we want to have a future, if we want to save ourselves and the planet.

I am not young enough to know everything.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions – for the fun of it – then one day you’ll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

I know, to banish anger altogether from one’s breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God’s grace.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.

You don’t go to Notre Dame to learn something; you go to Notre Dame to be somebody.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

First grade is very cheap. It’s the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don’t do it right.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

When I was young, I could not imagine being old. My mother said, and the doctor confirmed, that I had an unusual amount of energy; and it followed me into young adulthood.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

The best teacher is very interactive.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

I kinda live where I find myself.

A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom.

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Find people who will make you better.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

When I was young I didn’t care about education, just money and box office.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

I’ve learned over the years that when I go to that place of passion within me, there’s no force in the universe that can interfere with my completing a project.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

Before all else, be armed.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.