Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

A chaplain’s assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army.

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

Men don’t really like skinny, do they?

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

The only big things I’ve purchased are my dad’s heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.

Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery.

Giving should be entered into in just the same way as investing. Giving is investing.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

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

The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

What humility does for one is it reminds us that there are people before me. I have already been paid for. And what I need to do is prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who has yet to come but who may be here and needs me.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

When people meet me, they say that I’m really kind – contrary to a lot of my music.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.