I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to Him.

Enemies are so stimulating.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

I believe in that old adage that ‚as goes California, so goes the country.‘

Lord sanctify us. Oh! That Thy spirit might come and saturate every faculty, subdue every passion, and use every power of our nature for obedience to God.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

When I have a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out and paint the stars.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

Knowing that the time to sleep has come, the Lord sleeps, and does well in sleeping. Often, when we have been fretting and worrying, we should have glorified God far more had we literally gone to sleep.

There is no man on Earth or devil in Hell who can keep you from the very best God put in you.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

A person will sometimes devote all his life to the development of one part of his body – the wishbone.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us… While what we call ‚our own life‘ remains agreeable, we will not surrender it to Him. What, then, can God do in our interests but make ‚our own life‘ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness?

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

The American people are bigger than any president. I suppose I have faith in my country and in what it is founded on and the values we hold dear.

I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I’m a free spirit. I believe I’m here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that’s my religion.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building.

I don’t believe in the school of hard knocks, although I’ve had them. All that stuff about whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is so not true. Do you know what makes you stronger? When people treat you and your art with dignity.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

God sent me on earth. He send me to do something, and nobody can stop me. If God want to stop me, then I stop. Man never can.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven.

Thirty was so strange for me. I’ve really had to come to terms with the fact that I am now a walking and talking adult.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Since God had commanded it, it was necessary that I do it. Since God commanded it, even if I had a hundred fathers and mothers, even if I had been a King’s daughter, I would have gone nevertheless.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘