It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

When you draw or paint a tree, you do not imitate the tree; you do not copy it exactly as it is, which would be mere photography. To be free to paint a tree or a flower or a sunset, you have to feel what it conveys to you: the significance, the meaning of it.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.

I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

The word ‚good‘ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don’t know what that is; I don’t think too much about that.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

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

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.