I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

Although I’m only fourteen, I know quite well what I want. I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child. I feel quite independent of anyone.

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

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

I’m perpetually lonely.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experience and invest them in the future.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

I can express myself.

I’m not intimidated by how people perceive me.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

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.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

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

I may be no better, but at least I am different.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

I made my fair share of mistakes.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all.

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.

I resigned from the Marine Corps and flying in 1974, even though I loved them both. I quit because I no longer wanted to fight for peace. Instead, I believe we can build a more sustainable peace by working for prosperity.

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

Men take only their needs into consideration – never their abilities.

Only the shallow know themselves.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

We have a choice about how we take what happens to us in our life and whether or not we allow it to turn us. We can become consumed by hate and darkness, or we’re able to regain our humanity somehow, or come to terms with things and learn something about ourselves.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.

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

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.