If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Pretension is a poor joke that you play on yourself. Snap out of it. Recognise your strengths, work on your weaknesses. Real achievement is liking what you see in the mirror every morning.

I believe that the primary role of the government is to protect people and not run their lives. You used to be able to believe that in the Democratic Party.

You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.

That’s when you know you’re the greatest: when you’re the greatest, and people still put odds against you.

People love conspiracy theories.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

I’m a decent cook; I’m a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

I don’t feel I’ve had a decent critic ever on the East coast.

In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all.

You don’t carry in your countenance a letter of recommendation.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

I think the perception of peace is what distracts most people from really having it.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

I’m not sure what you need first – the players believing or others believing in them – but in the end, both have to think it.

Living in America and, of course, just being women in general, we’ve got more strength than we think we do.

Real beauty knocks you a little bit off kilter.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

The biggest problem with every art is by the use of appearance to create a loftier reality.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

There are some people who need to wear a label round their necks to show that they are Christians at all, or else we might mistake them for sinners, their actions are so like those of the ungodly.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

If you don’t stand your ground, then all that happens is people push you backwards.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

We should not underestimate ourselves, because if lots of individuals go together then we can accomplish almost anything.

I don’t think that a same-sex marriage is the way God intended it to be.