All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

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.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

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.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

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

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way.

Each day brings opportunity for decisions for eternity.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

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

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

I walk tall; I got a tall attitude.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

I think life is a matter of choices and that wherever we are, good or bad, is because of choices we make.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

I did not set out to convert anyone to Christianity.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.

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‘.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

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

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

Self-interest is the enemy of all true affection.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

I hate what I look like on TV, and I want to look better, and nothing makes the mothers more jealous.

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

Presented with the claims of nineteenth-century racist anthropology, a rational person will ask two sorts of questions: ‚What is the scientific status of the claims?‘ ‚What social or ideological needs do they serve?‘

You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

It didn’t even occur to me that I’m the last person in the world who should play salsa or Brazilian music.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.