I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

Your Highest Self is not just an idea that sounds lofty and spiritual. It is a way of being. It is the very first principle that you must come to understand and embrace as you move toward attracting to you that which you want and need for this parenthesis in eternity that you know as your life.

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

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

Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid of taking them.

I realized the other day that I’ve lived in New York longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

There’s not some idea I’m going to create a work that’s going to change everybody’s consciousness.

Usually, people have a tendency to be caught in the worries concerning the future or in the regret concerning the past. There is some kind of energy that is pushing them to run, and they are not able to establish themselves in the present moment.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

Those of us who submitted or surrendered our ideas and dreams and identities to the ‚leaders‘ must take back our rights, our identities, our responsibilities.

I’ve been careful in love. I’ve been careless in love. And I’ve had adventures I wouldn’t trade for anything.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We’re almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it’s inviting disaster.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

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.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

I was raised to be an independent woman, not the victim of anything.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They’re only powerful when you got your back turned.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to you from them.

I grew up in the east side of Detroit in an area where there was very little, except for a lot of scarcity, poverty and hunger. I never woke up saying, ‚I’m an orphan again today, isn’t this terrible? Poor me.‘

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

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.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We’re reared tough, and we fight.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.

The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.

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.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.