As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

Don’t bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. If you don’t feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace. If you need money, go to the bank, but not the marketplace.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time… I don’t want to just sit on my phone for hours.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Well, I wouldn’t say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

I was willing to accept what I couldn’t change.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

When I’m back in New York – and this is a terrible thing to complain about – I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I’d like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It’s kind of like being in the Mafia.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

Aim for the highest.

You’re not going to scare me into being somebody I don’t want to be.

‚Victory‘ is like, you won, so the question is, what? What did you win? I think that the songs go into that. It’s just about reaching a place in myself.

The thing about Jiu Jitsu is it is also not for everybody. It can be very humiliating and humbling. If you have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone smaller than you may be able to tap you out, it is going to be difficult.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

Getting stress out of your life takes more than prayer alone. You must take action to make changes and stop doing whatever is causing the stress. You can learn to calm down in the way you handle things.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I’ve had. And now that I’m in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won’t be half as much anger as there was.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

I created my MySpace page in eighth grade, because that’s how all my friends talked to each other, so I made one, too. Then, all of a sudden, my friends started putting my songs on their profiles, and then their relatives, their friends in different states did.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

It is only to the individual that a soul is given.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

For me, education was power.

If you’re not very clever you should be conciliatory.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I’m learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, ‚I can’t go to Kmart. I can’t take my kids to the haunted house.‘

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

I don’t like cream puff, corny guys. Usually, they are the nice guys, the ones that won’t hurt you. They’ll pull out the chair for you and the whole nine yards. Everything is perfect and boring.

I have wasted my hours.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

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.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of ‚Who do you think you are?‘

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.