I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

It’s the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

‚Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

I don’t want to express my opinion about actual politics, because if I do, I have to be responsible for my decision.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

The universe is transformation: life is opinion.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

I don’t like the name, U2, actually.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

On a spiritual level, it’s as though with my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. It’s illuminated life more than darkened it.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

It’s a funny old world.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.