I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I love being busy.

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I made bad decisions. I’m not denying that I made bad decisions.

For me, education was power.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

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

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

Most of us are raised to believe we are ordinary. The anchor of the universe is present in every child. A parent only needs to guide and step aside and let them fulfill their dharma. Help children remember that they can do or be anything.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

I’d be so bored if I wasn’t going out there, knowing that I could still do it. So, I’m going to work hard to be ready to go, and I still plan on playing for a long time.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

The highest reward that God gives us for good work is the ability to do better work.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

Little things affect little minds.

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

One of the huge imbalances in life is the disparity between your daily existence, with its routines and habits, and the dream you have within yourself of some extraordinarily satisfying way of living.

The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

My own dreams fortunately came true in this great state. I became Mr. Universe; I became a successful businessman. And even though some people say I still speak with a slight accent, I have reached the top of the acting profession.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

I didn’t always have 14,000 people wanting to hang out with me on a Saturday night.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

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’m fat, but I’m thin inside… there’s a thin man inside every fat man.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

I’m the type person, my safe place to be emotional is the booth.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

I always wanted a family.