I think, when you are growing up, you have to pull apart from what your mother wants or needs. You’ve got to go your own way, and that’s what I did.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

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

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

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.

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

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.

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.

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise, you die in solemnity.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

If you choose to do something, attack it. You can hate me, but there’s one thing you can’t say about me – that I didn’t attack it.

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

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

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

In the flush of love’s light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

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.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

I’m giving all that I have in this life. I’m opening up my notebook, and I’m saying everything in there out loud.

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

It’s always appealing to play a character that has to overcome himself as well as an obstacle. It makes the drama so much deeper.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

I’m over being a pop star. I don’t wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic. And I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot. I feel like I’m highly respected, which is more important than any award or any amount of records. And I feel like there comes a point when being a pop star is not enough.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

I guess that’s one of the things about growing up in the fifties – it never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be at least as successful as your parents.

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learnt to bear its ills without being overcome by them.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in your seeds.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

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

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

My dad seemed comfortable with his decision to be a ‚have-not,‘ but I knew that I wasn’t.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.