It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The human race may be the only intelligent beings in the galaxy.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

I am not stupid. I am a very bright guy. I know that in the fighting game, you get people who get brain damage and do themselves long-term harm.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

It’s not called quitting if you quit while you ahead. It’s about being aware and being strategic enough to know that you got to get out the pool at some point. You got to put your clothes back on and dry off.

When the mind is empty, silent, when it is in a state of complete negation – which is not blankness, nor the opposite of being positive, but a totally different state in which all thought has ceased – only then is it possible for that which is unnameable to come into being.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

An ignorant person is one who doesn’t know what you have just found out.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Religion, any religion, no matter what sort of wonderful religion, never be universal. So now education is universal, so we have to sort of find ways and means through education system, from kindergarten up to university level, to make awareness these good things, the values, inner values.

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realise is that you’re not alone.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

Even Gaddafi’s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

When I’m dancing, I’m not thinking about anything. I am here. I am totally there. You know? And the feeling is a sensation of being away from myself. My soul dances with the angels, and my body dances with my wife.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.