I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done. 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing. 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

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.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They’re only powerful when you got your back turned.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‚Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.‘

I only want my work to make people happy.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

I believe in being an innovator.

No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

I think and that is all that I am.

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

I’ve always felt that if I examine myself too much, I’ll find out what I know and don’t know, and I’ll burst the bubble. I’ve gotten so lucky relying on my animal instincts, I’d rather keep a little bit of the animal alive.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

When people say, you know, ‚Good teacher,‘ ‚Prophet,‘ ‚Really nice guy’… this is not how Jesus thought of Himself. So you’re left with a challenge in that, which is either Jesus was who he said he was or a complete and utter nut case. You have to make a choice on that.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot that’s left for you or to make one of your own.

The mineral world is a much more supple and mobile world than could be imagined by the science of the ancients. Vaguely analogous to the metamorphoses of living creatures, there occurs in the most solid rocks, as we now know, perpetual transformation of a mineral species.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

I mean we all need a second chance sometimes.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.