I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Jump out the window if you are the object of passion. Flee it if you feel it. Passion goes, boredom remains.

I love to take, process and share photos – it fills me up.

Power is like being a lady… if you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

The connection between psychology, mythology, and literature is as important as the connection between psychology and biology and the hard sciences.

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in vibrating with the passion for unity. This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

Football is unconditional love.

I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

We’re hardwired for connection. There’s no arguing with the bioscience. But we can want it so badly we’re trying to hot-wire it.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

Live truth instead of professing it.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt – you know, I had to go out and do them.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

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.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

Those outside the church expect followers of Christ to live differently, yet today many in church are chasing after the world – not to win them, but to be like them.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

People haven’t always been there for me, but music always has.

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person. That’s the only way I can find an explanation for why 55,000 people would want to come see me sing.

When it comes down to my brand, We the Best, we’re about the people and whoever is passionate and in love the way I’m in love when it comes down to the headphones I’m promoting.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

I don’t know if it’s changing already with ‚Joanne,‘ but my intention is to bring people together that don’t know each other and that would maybe feel awkward, but somehow be brought together by the music. That’s what I wanted to do. Because that is pure and authentic to my family history and what I stand for.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I refuse to accept other people’s ideas of happiness for me. As if there’s a ‚one size fits all‘ standard for happiness.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.