I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.

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.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do In His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing.

For years I wanted to be older, and now I am.

If someone you know makes a bad decision or uses bad judgment, it doesn’t mean you have to allow that to alter your attitude. Why should you allow anyone else’s bad decisions to send you into a tailspin of misery?

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

I’m bad at picking heroes.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

We all self-conscious. I’m just the first to admit it.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Never complain and never explain.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

Humble people ask for help.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

The self is hateful.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

The best thing about my protest has been to see how more and more people have been coming and getting involved.

You can’t have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits, it keeps becoming something else.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

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

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.