Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

I am proud of having done what I’ve done. Very proud.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

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

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

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

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

Never complain and never explain.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

I really haven’t had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life. So I pretty much like to make it up. I’d rather tell a story about somebody else.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

I don’t want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.

The more successful I become, the more I need a man.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

They know enough who know how to learn.

I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience and being persistent.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

I think we’re doing a dreadful job of educating.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

Error is always more busy than truth.

I can’t tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I’ve got a good bead on myself.

I have to keep improving myself and challenging myself.