I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

I would rather make my name than inherit it.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

Thirty-three-years-old, still creating art. It’s rage, it’s creativity, it’s pain, it’s hurt, but it’s the opportunity to still have my voice get out there through music.

My future is righteousness.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

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.

Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

For me, education was power.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

I hated to be treated as a child. I thought it was the worst situation.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

I cry so much less than I used to. I used to be one of the most teary people.

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.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

Each day brings opportunity for decisions for eternity.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes,‘ he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. ‚Shake it off. Stop complainin‘. Stop grumblin‘. Stop cryin‘. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

Absolutely not. I have no problem with commitment. In fact, I love having someone in my life.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

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.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn’t.

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

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

I know a lot of athletes and models are written off as just bodies. I never felt used for my body.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

I’ve done the bad-boy thing. It was fun for a good three months. But the thing about bad boys is, you have to keep in mind, you’re never gonna marry a bad boy.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

The Israelites‘ slavery in Egypt is the equivalent of our slavery to sin. God sent Moses to deliver them from bondage, and He sent Jesus Christ to set us free.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.