Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

I’m not a complete psychopath. Am I partially? Sure. I’ll accept that. But I’m not a complete psychopath.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

I am not saying I am the best manager in the world. But I’m quite good.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

Rather be dead than cool.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

I don’t make people bend over backwards, and I don’t like that in people. I am definitely no diva.

I realized, ‚Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.‘

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

My life is real.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

Whatever I am, it’s natural… I don’t have to pretend to be aggressive, don’t have to show the opposition that I am on the field. Being aggressive comes naturally to me, helps me perform.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

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 worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

For an author, the nice characters aren’t much fun. What you want are the screwed up characters. You know, the characters that are constantly wondering if what they are doing is the right thing, characters that are not only screwed up but are self-tapping screws. They’re doing it for themselves.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

I don’t consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

Pride is an independent, me-oriented spirit. It makes people arrogant, rude and hard to get along with. When our heart is prideful, we don’t give God the credit and we mistreat people, looking down on them and thinking we deserve what we have.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.