I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

Some Christians feel guilty when they are doing something that isn’t ‚spiritual.‘ Somehow or another, they feel the need to hurry through the grocery store, dash through the house cleaning, and rush through all the daily aspects of life that seem irrelevant to their faith.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

I have trouble imagining what I could do that’s beyond the practicality of what I can do.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

Nobody knows me.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

When you create circumstances together, when you try everything, then you can lose. But you need to show the importance.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

I have never smuggled anything in my life. Why, then, do I feel an uneasy sense of guilt on approaching a customs barrier?

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.

It started to weigh on me that I was responsible for the moves that had made me successful, but I wasn’t reaping the lion’s share of the profits, and that was problematic for me.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

It’s one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There’s no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.

The most deeply personal of my works are the non-fiction works, the autobiographical works, because there, I’m talking about myself very directly.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.