I’m addicted to placebos.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

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

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

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.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

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

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

Cowardice… is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

Avoid popularity if you would have peace.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

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.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

I’m not perfect.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

The ego is only an illusion, but a very influential one. Letting the ego-illusion become your identity can prevent you from knowing your true self. Ego, the false idea of believing that you are what you have or what you do, is a backwards way of assessing and living life.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

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

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

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

If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

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.

The one thing that I keep learning over and over again is that I don’t know nothing. I mean, that’s my life lesson.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

I didn’t get depressed, I don’t get depressed.

We want to do a lot of stuff; we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Reactive people… are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

I’m actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, ‚Man, I said too much.‘ It’s hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side… It has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his psychological health.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

When the negative thoughts come – and they will; they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

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