Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

I’ve had no problem harnessing anger.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Ambition never is in a greater hurry than I; it merely keeps pace with circumstances and with my general way of thinking.

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I still learn, but I think it’s the best thing in life to have a kid.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Failure is not an option. Everyone has to succeed.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

I don’t look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I – personally, I’m not interested in my own past. I’m only interested in today – perhaps tomorrow.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

I’m so wrapped up in my work that it’s often impossible to consider other things in my life. My marriage ended in divorce because of this, my relationship with Holly has suffered by this.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

How lucky Adam was. He knew when he said a good thing, nobody had said it before.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

I think the worst part about a breakup sometimes, if one could choose a worst part, would possibly be if you get out of a relationship, and you don’t recognize yourself because you changed a lot about you.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.

We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

It is always your next move.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.