I have total recall. I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.

I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

For me, education was power.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

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

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

Don’t compare yourself with other people; compare yourself with who you were yesterday.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

My mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for – scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

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

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.

My future is righteousness.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‚I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.‘

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

I’ve had some ‚riotous excursions of the human spirit‘ alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it’s time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way – they earned their stripes in combat.

Whoever doesn’t know it must learn and find by experience that ‚a quiet conscience makes one strong!‘

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

At one time, I was very angry. I even treated fashion like a kind of crusade: you were either with us or against us, that kind of feeling. Now I know we need ideas, not kicking down a door.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. I have respect for the past, but I’m a person of the moment. I’m here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I’m at, then I go forward to the next place.

To go to the field and train and understand when days are less, that’s where experience helps.

I think I have always had a little humor.

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

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Love is a state of being.

I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

My life is my message.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.