Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Do not seek to bring things to pass in accordance with your wishes, but wish for them as they are, and you will find them.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, ‚You’re Gaga‘.

I don’t like being alone.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

A true man hates no one.

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Human beings are the only animals of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.

It’s nice to be included in people’s fantasies but you also like to be accepted for your own sake.

When I was a child, there’s one thing I said: ‚I never want to be alone.‘ That’s what I would say. I don’t want to be alone.

We’re all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

To this day, some of my closest friends say, ‚Gaga, you know, everything’s great. You’re a singer; your dreams have come true.‘ But, still, when certain things are said to you over and over again as you’re growing up, it stays with you and you wonder if they’re true.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too.

I’m not a complete psychopath. Am I partially? Sure. I’ll accept that. But I’m not a complete psychopath.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair, there is no hope.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don’t. I feel that it’s quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.

Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

I don’t compare myself to anyone else; I don’t make comments about anyone else because they do what feels right for them, and that’s okay by me.

We do not judge the people we love.

The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.

Your friend is your needs answered.

It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

It is fun to be in the same decade with you.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

We are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.

There is something about building up a comradeship – that I still believe is the greatest of all feats – and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability that he has.