I think that when you’re making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

I’m afraid to fail again.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

We become what we repeatedly do.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

One thing I want to make clear, as far as my own rebirth is concerned, the final authority is myself and no one else, and obviously not China’s Communists.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

If there is only one thing in my life that I am proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.

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

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

Strangely, some songs you really don’t want to write.

Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you’re not going to get played on radio, and you’re not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

I don’t have emotional needs, only physical ones.

Peace in the world starts with peace in oneself. If everyone lives mindfully, everyone will be more healthy, feel more fulfilled in their daily lives and there will be more peace.

So many people live with anger and unforgiveness, and many of them are Christians.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

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 now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Family home evening is more for the purpose of teaching values and gospel principles, displaying talents and enjoying different kinds of family fun and activities.

I just want to be myself.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

I’ve been called a recluse. There’s definitely truth in that. I like to spend time alone.

All I do is make music.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

I think I have always had a little humor.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

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’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

I am God’s vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.

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.

Even the securest financial plan and the finest health coverage aren’t enough to hold us steady when the challenges come… We need something more, something deeper and unshakeable, something that will see us through life’s hard times.