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

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

I came up from a difficult background.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

My life is mine to remember.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

Mental toughness is a lifestyle. It’s something that you live every single day of your life. When I was growing up, I was a lazy kid. I was a lazy kid, and everybody goes, ‚How did you get to where you’re at today? How did you get to where you’re running 200 miles at one time in 39 hours? Being so disciplined?‘

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

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.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be developed.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

‚Trilogy‘ was more of a claustrophobic body of work. Before it was released, I hadn’t left my city for 21 years, and I had never been on a plane, not once. I spent my entire life on one setting; that’s probably why pieces of the album feel like one long track, because that’s what my life felt like. It felt like one long song.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

I’m pretty positive, optimistic, so I always expect the best.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

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.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.

Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

Education is important because it prepares you for life.

Thoughts are mental energy; they’re the currency that you have to attract what you desire. Learn to stop spending that currency on thoughts you don’t want.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

I’m not very articulate.

Most of the people that I deal with are human. So I’ve had a lot of experience with that.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

I never dared to be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so what I think is really important is sustainability.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

The work is the work. The work is not me.

I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot, suffering as I am, do without something which is greater than I am, which is my life, the power to create.

We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.