In the West, as well as some other parts of the world, the personal sense of ego tends to predominate, whereas in other areas, there is a more collective sense of ego. This collective ego emphasizes the ‚we‘ rather than the ‚I.‘

I’m considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I’ve never been bored in my life.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

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.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

If you get your ego in your way, you will only look to other people and circumstances to blame.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.

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.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law.

I’m nobody, who are you?

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.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

Just because I managed to do a little something, I don’t want anyone back home to think I got the big head.

You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.

I really believed that fear is contagious.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

Fame doesn’t fulfill you. It warms you a bit, but that warmth is temporary.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

You can either be a host to God, or a hostage to your ego. It’s your call.

Men are nearly always willing to believe what they wish.

I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

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

I can’t disguise myself with a wig and dark glasses – the wheelchair gives me away.

In order to acquire a growing and lasting respect in society, it is a good thing, if you possess great talent, to give, early in your youth, a very hard kick to the right shin of the society that you love. After that, be a snob.

I think it’s important as an artist to never forget where you’re from.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

Many people in the western world are spoiled by the conveniences of our culture.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

I think I’ve developed, as many people do, this sense of, ‚Don’t say the wrong thing, or else people will point at you and laugh.‘

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.

Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

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.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

People like to talk about war.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.