Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

Having listened to great songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, I felt there was nothing new that was coming out that really represented me and the way I felt. So I started writing my own stuff.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

I’m very free-spirited.

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

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

With all singers, insecurity is your best security. That’s why we’re such loud people and why we walk all funny. You think, ‚Are people interested?‘ But I think our band has something and they know we don’t just put albums out. We do think about it.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Smooth functioning of social life has always depended on the recognition of certain basic limits to behavior. We cannot simply say or do anything we wish, or offend people, without paying consequences – isolation, ostracism, etc.

I can say I’d honestly rather be happy than have 30 to 40 songs that I’ve written about these thrilling, exciting, horrible, unhappy times.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.

There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past – whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

In order to be an immaculate member of a flock of sheep, one must above all be a sheep oneself.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

He does not seem to me to be a free man who does not sometimes do nothing.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

I’ve never gotten thick skin. If you close yourself off and you get this protective armor, there is a price you pay with that – of not feeling. And feeling is important when you are a songwriter.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

I am just one human being.

No driver is perfect.

Love is the answer, and you know that for sure; Love is a flower, you’ve got to let it grow.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.

I’ve had everything pierced at some point.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

Let the path be open to talent.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It’s fine to be a pop star. ‚Oh, it’s great, lots of fun, aren’t they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!‘

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

I’m not a big fan of psychoanalysis: I think if you have mental problems what you need are good pills. But I do think that if you have thinks that bother you, things that are unresolved, the more that you talk about them, write about them, the less serious they become.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

New roads; new ruts.

As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs on stage, and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being myself.

It’s like the Wild West, the Internet. There are no rules.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.