I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy!

The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head – chemo-brain they call it. It’s awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

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

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.

My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.

I have no time to think about other writers. I am too busy with my own problems.

I don’t have any secrets I need kept any more.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

Always do whatever’s next.

A warrior is not a person that carries a gun. The biggest war you ever go through is right between your own ears. It’s in your mind. We’re all going through a war in our mind, and we have to callus our mind to fight that war and to win that war.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Success is only meaningful and enjoyable if it feels like your own.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise, you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.

I don’t think I will ever be content. I am somebody who is always hungry.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

You can’t put your feet on the ground until you’ve touched the sky.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

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

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

I don’t regret anything.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

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

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

My wife and I don’t compete. We know each other’s preferences, and we work to provide those for each other. One will take over when the other is faced with something he or she dislikes. That’s what friends do.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.