A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

The art is long, life is short.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he’s going to get sick on it.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.

I have made the mistaken assumption – and I will attempt to be better at this – of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

I think, a lot of times when you meet someone, you feel like you need to appear like you’re not interested in them so that they’ll be more interested in you. But what happens when you start showing him that you actually like him? What’s he gonna do then? Play the tape forward; how do you keep a guy like that? I don’t want to sign up for that.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

There’s many a man has more hair than wit.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

France has more need of me than I have need of France.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

I don’t like talking to celebrities.

All men hate the nagging.

When I got somethin‘ to say, I’ll say it.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Some animals utter a loud cry. Some are silent, and others have a voice, which in some cases may be expressed by a word; in others, it cannot. There are also noisy animals and silent animals, musical and unmusical kinds, but they are mostly noisy about the breeding season.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Of course you can’t ‚trust‘ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‚trust‘ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

When I’m nervous, I stutter, and I had to keep stopping and starting.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

I can unload my opinion on anybody at anytime.

I have an urge to communicate. I think I’m a change from what it would be like dating a normal guy who doesn’t talk too much.

Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.

Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.