I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

Modesty is a learned affectation. And as soon as life slams the modest person against the wall, that modesty drops.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

At some point, you grow out of being attracted to that flame that burns you over and over and over again.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

I think who you are in school really sticks with you.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Every time you think the problem is ‚out there,‘ that very thought is the problem.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

I’m crazy, but I’m not too crazy.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

We feel and know that we are eternal.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

There’s a long way to fall when you pretend that you’re so far away from the earth, far away from reality, floating in a bubble that’s protected by fame or success. It’s scary, and it’s the thing I fear the most: to be swallowed up by that bubble. It can be poison to you, fame.

I have never felt more confident in myself, more clear on who I am as a woman. But I am constantly thinking about my own health and making sure that I’m eating right and getting exercise and watching the aches and pains. I want to be this really fly 80-90-year old.

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.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

Catering to bad feelings feeds and empowers them.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

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.

The only shame is to have none.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

There is such a thing as old emotional pain living inside you. It is an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose. It leaves behind an energy form of emotional pain.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that – that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.

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?

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

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.

Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

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.

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.

What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.