I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

Reactive people… are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

The nobler a man, the harder it is for him to suspect inferiority in others.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

I can be a cruel person.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They’re going outside and trying everything. They don’t realize that it’s right inside themselves.

I periodically realize every few years that the only person whose taste I really trust is me.

I worked out early on to give up things I couldn’t do well at all.

Some days I totally appreciate everything that’s happening to me, and some days I feel everyone’s waiting for me to mess up.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

Confine yourself to the present.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That’s why I started in with the props.

Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves.

Joanne‘ is a progression for me. It was about going into the studio and forgetting that I was famous.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

As a human being, anger is a part of our mind. Irritation also part of our mind. But you can do – anger come, go. Never keep in your sort of – your inner world, then create a lot of suspicion, a lot of distrust, a lot of negative things, more worry.

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

True self is non-self, the awareness that the self is made only of non-self elements. There’s no separation between self and other, and everything is interconnected. Once you are aware of that you are no longer caught in the idea that you are a separate entity.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

I was born with a great gift, and sometimes with that comes a destructive streak.

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

Analysis is like a lobotomy. Who wants to have all their edges shaved off?

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

I fear that many a man’s good resolutions only need the ordinary fire of daily life to make them melt away. So, too, with fine professions and the boastings of perfection which abound in this age of shams.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I’ve had no problem harnessing anger.

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

I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.

Men must know their limitations.

Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

A conductor can’t be too arrogant with an orchestra and try to impose himself too much.

All of us knows, not what is expedient, not what is going to make us popular, not what the policy is, or the company policy – but in truth each of us knows what is the right thing to do. And that’s how I am guided.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

There’s Madeleine, and then there’s ‚Madeleine Albright‘. And I sometimes kind of think, who is this person? Once you become ‚Madeleine Albright‘ it doesn’t go away.

In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.