I hear my friends and my mom tell me I’m special, but honestly, I still don’t get it.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they’re better than other human beings.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Overall there’s going to be things I’m not great at.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

Hatred is self-punishment.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

If you’re talking to a man who wouldn’t fight with you under any circumstances whatsoever, then you’re talking to someone for whom you have absolutely no respect.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

The truth is that you can only come to know God when you give up the past and the future in your mind and merge totally into the now, because God is always here now.

It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.

I’m an emotional person.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‚Ego‘.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Day by day we should weigh what we have granted to the spirit of the world against what we have denied to the spirit of Jesus, in thought and especially in deed.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

I worked with someone who told me they’d never like me. But for some reason, I just felt like I needed her approval. So I started changing myself to please her. It made me stop being social and friendly. I was so unhappy.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

I don’t go around thinking I’m Ray Bradbury all the time.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

We’re all insecure, aren’t we? I’m not walking around like I’m macho man or anything.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

I’ve never been reckless – it’s always calculated. I’m mischievous, but I’m calculated.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

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

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.