Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

Since day one, since the first time I touched the pen, I wanted to be the best at what I do.

There is no unique picture of reality.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

It could be – and it has been argued, in my view rather plausibly, though neuroscientists don’t like it – that neuroscience for the last couple hundred years has been on the wrong track.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

I believe that I’m one of the best in the world at what I do, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

Nothing is stopping me from doing what I love to do.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

I sleep people. I put people unconscious. I’m stating facts.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

I don’t profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn’t much. But the things that I’m really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I’m not successful, what do I have?

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

I’ve found men are less likely to let petty things annoy them.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

Refuse to be a lazy Christian, and resist a passive, apathetic attitude.

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

I like entertaining people. I really miss it.