At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

I just want to be myself.

If all you’re doing is grinding for the man, it’s going to burden you. Once you say, ‚Hey, I’m grinding for the man, but I’m putting money away, and this is part of my exit strategy,‘ you’re working for you.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!

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

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Never say anything about yourself you do not want to come true.

That’s something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

I’m not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is – this thing that happens to everyone, so I’ve heard.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

I was set free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I still had a daughter who I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

I like to write about love and love lost because I feel like there are so many different subcategories of emotions that you can possibly delve into.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love; they want all the things that I want, and I’m not afraid to say those things and act on them, and I think that’s why they identify with me.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

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

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.