Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

God made me and broke the mold.

Anyone can have a good day, but you have to be able to perform on a bad day.

Read a record number of books in a given month. If you’re focused on intellectual growth, train yourself to study harder and longer than ever before.

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.

Passions are vices or virtues to their highest powers.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

We choose what attitudes we have right now. And it’s a continuing choice.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

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

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

I want kids to know: Don’t wait for somebody to come along and tell you you’re special. Because that may never happen.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

I know I’m a good professional, I know that no one’s harder on me than myself and that’s never going to change, under any circumstances.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

I’m not really book-smart.

If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.

I’m going to use all my tools, my God-given ability, and make the best life I can with it.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

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

You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

I’m about being the best.

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

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

My fat never made me less money.

‚They‘ is… stay away from them, please. There is so many different definitions of ‚they.‘ You might have a personal ‚they.‘ They against you; they want you broken and miserable. They don’t like winners; they don’t like people who’s blessed. So everybody’s got a different ‚they.‘

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

I feel like when I try to fit in, it comes across as not genuine, and that is not good. I’d rather just do me and have people say, ‚Oh. That’s interesting,‘ than try to fit in.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Success has always been a great liar.

Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?

The only shame is to have none.

I have never felt more confident in myself, more clear on who I am as a woman. But I am constantly thinking about my own health and making sure that I’m eating right and getting exercise and watching the aches and pains. I want to be this really fly 80-90-year old.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.