If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

I’m not really good at fun-to-know, human interest stuff. We’re not ‚celebrities‘, whose life itself is a performance. Good or bad or ugly, we are our words. They’re what people meet.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

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

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources and the difficulty of my life… I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a vagabond.

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

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

I’m an emotional person. Sometimes I can’t help it.

If man makes himself a worm he must not complain when he is trodden on.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

I feel Anglo-American.

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

My affection for Taiwan… is witnessed by everyone. My wife is Taiwanese and I am a son-in-law of Taiwan. I am half Taiwanese.

Before you start a goal – let’s take care of our insecurities because they are going to surface when you put yourself in the crucible and you’re suffering.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

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.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self.

A ‚No‘ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‚Yes‘ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Because we’re actors we can pretend and fake it, but I’d rather the intimate investment was authentic.

I know my flaws before other people point them out to me.

What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

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

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

I always was a Christian… whatsoever a man thinks in his heart is who he is.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

When in doubt tell the truth.

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

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises, for never intending to go beyond promise, it costs nothing.

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.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

My only fault is that I don’t realize how great I really am.