I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering – because you can’t take it in all at once.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

We don’t want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.

When you say ‚follow me on Twitter,‘ and you get 10 million people to follow you – you just leveraged your influence to add value to an app that you have no ownership in.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

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

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

Most of our lives aren’t that exciting, but the drama is still going on in the small details.

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

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

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.