Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

We are what we believe we are.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

I’m a Sagittarius, and one of our major qualities is that we’re blindly optimistic.

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

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

The fact is that since you’re a divine creation who originated in the world of Spirit, you have exactly the right amount of smarts to accomplish all that you need and want to do while you’re here on earth. It’s all perfect… and so are you!

The human race is governed by its imagination.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

You can be happy where you are.

Instead of being critical of people in authority over you and envious of their position, be happy you’re not responsible for everything they have to do. Instead of piling on complaints, thank them for what they do. Overwhelm them with encouragement and appreciation!

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.

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.

Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn’t want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

I like to have fun all the time, even if I’m working.

I’m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, ‚You know, there’s no sound in outer space.‘

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

Sometimes negative news does come out, but it is often exaggerated and manipulated to spread scandal. Journalists sometimes risk becoming ill from coprophilia and thus fomenting coprophagia: which is a sin that taints all men and women, that is, the tendency to focus on the negative rather than the positive aspects.

I don’t want to say anything negative about anybody or anything or anybody’s political beliefs. I’ve never done that. I’ve never tried to get involved in those things.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.