I only see clearly what I remember.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries! what worthy man does not keep those in mind?

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I’m a realist.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

People do dismiss ambient music, don’t they? They call it ‚easy listening,‘ as if to suggest that it should be hard to listen to.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

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

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today’s events.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

I try to speak in a way that people can understand.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

I trust my taste. I trust it completely and I always have done, and I’ve always thought it isn’t that different from everybody else’s.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

If it’s hard to remember, it’ll be difficult to forget.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

A celebrated people lose dignity upon a closer view.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

A person hears only what they understand.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

I have a memory, and I can just eliminate mistakes when they come up because I’ve already made them.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

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.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.