I’m a human being. I’ve got opinions, I’m not always right, I’m not always on time, I don’t always say things in the proper way, but my intentions are always extremely pure.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it’s a good indication of what you’re made of.

I never make conscious decisions.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They’re going outside and trying everything. They don’t realize that it’s right inside themselves.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

You aren’t your work, your accomplishments, your possessions, your home, your family… your anything. You’re a creation of your Source, dressed in a physical human body intended to experience and enjoy life on Earth.

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

There’s certainly a side of me that isn’t completely… sane. Or completely ‚even‘ all the time. We all have our dark sides.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

I don’t really read a lot of newspapers. I don’t pay attention to what is being said or written about me. I’ve had lots of experiences in the past when I got too much into it. That sort of diverts your focus.

If I’m gonna tell a real story, I’m gonna start with my name.

Observe all men, thyself most.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Because you know when you first become famous, you start walking a little different because people are staring at you.

I am, as a character, at times, a little overbearing. I recognize that.

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

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

The essential lesson I’ve learned in life is to just be yourself. Treasure the magnificent being that you are and recognize first and foremost you’re not here as a human being only. You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

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.

Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Whether I’m wearing lots of makeup or no makeup, I’m always the same person inside.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

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

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

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

If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least resistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives.

While you’re saving your face, you’re losing your ass.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

I don’t think I’m bad for people. If I did think I was bad for people, I would go back to driving a truck, and I really mean this.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.