I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

I’m the kind of person who needs to feel like everything happens for a reason. When you date a guy and it goes badly, that’s horrible. But if you can write a song about it, then it was worth it.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

I am two with nature.

What you are comes to you.

Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Solutions are not the answer.

There’s an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

You’ve got to work things out in the cloakroom, and when you’ve got them worked out, you can debate a little before you vote.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

I don’t do research. I never have.

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

I have always believed in evolving a consensus before taking any major decision.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

I’m one of the slowest drivers on the road. I mosey along. If you’re doing anything too fast, including living life too fast, that creates sudden death. If I have to be somewhere on time, I make sure I leave early enough.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

When in doubt, don’t.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the undecideds could go one way or another.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

Everything popular is wrong.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Wisdom stands at the turn in the road and calls upon us publicly, but we consider it false and despise its adherents.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Is it not rather what we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other?

There were the questions of what kind of First Lady I would be, what issues would I focus on. Those were the questions that were being pounded on me through the campaign. A lot of times, I wondered what in the world Barack was even getting us into.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

One of the key qualities a leader must possess is the ability to detach from the chaos, mayhem, and emotions in a situation and make good, clear decisions based on what is actually happening.

I don’t want to express my opinion about actual politics, because if I do, I have to be responsible for my decision.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

I have many regrets, and I’m sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret… if you have any sense, and if you don’t regret them, maybe you’re stupid.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.