A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.

I get nervous when I don’t get nervous. If I’m nervous I know I’m going to have a good show.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

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

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

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

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

I’ll be glad to reply to or dodge your questions, depending on what I think will help our election most.

You do the policy, I’ll do the politics.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

To solve any problem, here are three questions to ask yourself: First, what could I do? Second, what could I read? And third, who could I ask?

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

If you judge, investigate.

I’m my own worst critic, and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

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.

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‚satisfactory,‘ I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

Truly it is an evil to be full of faults; but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and to be unwilling to recognize them, since that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion.

One aspect of appellate judging is we have to give reasons for all of our decisions. And when you sit down and try to write it out, sometimes you find that your first judgment wasn’t the right one.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.