There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension.

Be as you wish to seem.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

No man is hurt but by himself.

You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.

If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

Seeing is not always believing.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it’s a good indication of what you’re made of.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.