I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Sometimes, I want to talk on a song and be angry, because I am angry. Then there’s always a part of me that remembers that this record lives past my being angry, and so do I really want to be angry about that? Is that feeling going to have longevity?

I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria – when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

I’m super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I’m critical of other people, too – I try not to be, though.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

I hate to be smart.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Enjoy the satisfaction that comes from doing little things well.

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

I don’t think I’m an unlucky person.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Money does not change people, people change.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

Complaining is dangerous business. It can damage or even destroy your relationship with God, your relationships with other people, and even with your relationship with yourself.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I can express myself.

I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.

I’m no genius.

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

The thing about Jiu Jitsu is it is also not for everybody. It can be very humiliating and humbling. If you have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone smaller than you may be able to tap you out, it is going to be difficult.

Everybody has done something that we wish we didn’t say or do and wish we could take it back.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.