Here’s something that’s contrary to popular belief: I actually don’t like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don’t. I do not like to think at all.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

I can tell you, honest friend, what to believe: believe life; it teaches better that book or orator.

To live is to think.

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

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

A frustration I have is that a lot of people increasingly seem to equate an advertising business model with somehow being out of alignment with your customers. I think it’s the most ridiculous concept.

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

I don’t like to feel like I’m in a club when I’m in my car and I turn on the radio. Anything that ceases to be a song and just sounds like house music kind of stresses me out.

Worshipping the Lord means giving Him the place that he must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that He alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before Him that He is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

I can be jubilant one moment and pensive the next, and a cloud could go by and make that happen.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

I’ve never dropped anyone I believed in.

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

For ninety per cent of those who view him from outside, the Christian God looks like a great landowner administering his estates, the world. Now this conventional picture, which is too well justified by appearances, corresponds in no way to the dogmatic basis or point of view of the Gospels.

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.

There are two great forces, God’s force of good and the devil’s force of evil, and I believe Satan is alive and he is working, and he is working harder than ever, and we have many mysteries that we don’t understand.

I take inspiration from everyone and everything. I’m inspired by current champions, former champions, true competitors, people dedicated to their dream, hard workers, dreamers, believers, achievers.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

I do not think I should care to go on worshipping a Madonna even if she did wink. One cannot make much out of a wink. We want something more than that from the object of our adoration.

When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

I discovered me in the library. I went to find me in the library.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.

If Christ has died for me, ungodly as I am, without strength as I am, then I cannot live in sin any longer, but must arouse myself to love and serve Him who has redeemed me.

What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

I would rather die than do something which I know to be a sin, or to be against God’s will.

Why is it that although it takes us years to get into our messes, we expect God to get us out of them in a few days?

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

This is America. You’re entitled to believe what you want.