I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

I feel confident imposing change on myself. It’s a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That’s why I need to throw curve balls.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

I don’t have to show anything to anyone. There is nothing to prove.

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple.

The Bible tells us to be perfect. This is likely a scary thought for many people. It used to scare me. I didn’t think I could ever get there, no matter how hard I tried.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on the outside!

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

The left paw has done me well over the years. I’m not a scientist, I’m a martial artist.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of connection and the path to the feeling of worthiness. If it doesn’t feel vulnerable, the sharing is probably not constructive.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I’m at peace with what I’m doing, I feel good with what I wake up doing and about my lifestyle.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.

Suffering by nature or chance never seems so painful as suffering inflicted on us by the arbitrary will of another.

I’m fat, but I’m thin inside… there’s a thin man inside every fat man.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

I’m not arrogant enough to look back on my career and criticize my choices. It’s really not my place.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

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.

When it comes to everybody else’s thing and their lane and their timing, I’m never doing anything intentional to, like, come after somebody. That will always be my biggest mistake or anybody’s biggest mistake if that’s their intention.

There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

Your Highest Self only wants you to be at peace. It does not judge, compare, or demand that you defeat anyone or be better than anyone.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

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

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Any hand that I’ve shaken, any person that I met when I was Joe Blow, now that I’m this guy Kevin Hart, has come back. That’s why I treat everybody with respect. I’m always a nice pleasant guy to meet because when they come back to you, they remember.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.