Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

The weather and my mood have little connection. I have my foggy and my fine days within me; my prosperity or misfortune has little to do with the matter.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

I don’t really get nervous that much, or if I do, only I know. It’s all inside me. I am good at hiding everything.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

I’m concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I’m aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

Individuals need to be willing to face truth about their attitudes, behaviors, even what we want out of life.

If I feel anxious every time someone is staring at me, well, I can’t control what they stare at, but my reaction is, I’m just not going to go outside the house. I’m going to stay in and chill. And when I do go out, I understand what comes along with that.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

Only the shallow know themselves.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Observe all men, thyself most.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

Solutions are not the answer.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

In the stillness of your presence, you can feel your own formless and timeless reality as the unmanifested life that animates your physical form. You can then feel the same life deep within every other human and every other creature. You look beyond the veil of form and separation. This is the realization of oneness. This is love.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.