Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

The future is called ‚perhaps‘, which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto – I tell people you don’t have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.

The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.

The more you know the less you need to say.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I’d give up just about everything else for that.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Life loves the liver of it.

You practice mindfulness, on the one hand, to be calm and peaceful. On the other hand, as you practice mindfulness and live a life of peace, you inspire hope for a future of peace.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Ambition can creep as well as soar.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

If you can ask a young man to give his life for his country, you can lead people.

I think people inspire me the most. If I meet a person who is incredibly complex, and all of a sudden, I start thinking in rhymes, that person could be a muse.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali.

When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

I’m never going to go to Mars, but I’ve helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.