All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

I like being able to be on the inside of music, rather than on the outside listening to it.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto – I tell people you don’t have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.